PowerPoint Show by Andrew

World War I was the first major conflict to see widespread use of powered aircraft -- invented barely more than a decade before the fighting began.

Airplanes, along with kites, tethered balloons, and zeppelins gave all major armies a new tactical platform to observe and attack enemy forces from above.

A French two-seat biplane reconnaissance aircraft, flying over Compeign Sector, France ca. 1918.

German pilot Richard Scholl and his co-pilot Lieutenant Anderer, in flight gear beside their biplane in 1918.

German soldiers attend to a stack of gas canisters attached to a manifold, inflating a balloon on the Western front.

A German Type Ae 800 observation balloon ascending.

A captured German Taube monoplane, on display in the courtyard of Les Invalides in Paris, in 1915.

Captain Ross-Smith (left) and Observer in front of a Modern Bristol Fighter, 1st Squadron A.F.C. Palestine, February 1918.

Wreckage of a German Albatross D. III fighter biplane.

Unidentified pilot wearing a type of breathing apparatus.

A Farman airplane with rockets attached to its struts.

A German Pfalz single-seat triplane fighter aircraft, 1918.

Observer in a German balloon gondola shoots off light signals with a pistol.

British reconnaissance plane flying over enemy lines, in France.

German soldiers attend to an upended German aircraft.

A Sunday morning service in an aerodrome in France.

Captain Maurice Happe, rear seat, commander of French squadron MF 29, seated in his Farman MF.11 Shorthorn bomber with a Captain Berthaut.

A German pilot lies dead in his crashed airplane in France, in 1918.

Attaching a 100 kg bomb to a German airplane.

An aircraft. crashed and burning in German territory, 1917.

A Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter biplane aircraft taking off from a platform built on top of HMAS Australia's midships "Q" turret, in 1918.

An aerial photographer with a Graflex camera, 1917

14th Photo Section, 1st Army, "The Balloonatic Section". Capt. A. W. Stevens (center, front row) and personnel. 1918.

No. 1 Squadron, a unit of the Australian Flying Corps, 1918.