Fighter aircraft

The fighter aircraft emerged in 1915 when Dutch engineer Anthony Fokker solved the problem that had stymied armed aviation: how to fire a machine gun through a spinning propeller without destroying your own blades. The Fokker Eindecker, equipped with a synchronization gear that timed gunfire to miss the propeller arc, transformed the airplane from observation platform to weapon.

The adjacent possible had been building since the Wright Brothers' 1903 flight. By 1914, all major powers had military aviation units, but they were used primarily for reconnaissance—pilots sometimes waved at enemy observers passing in the opposite direction. When pilots began carrying pistols and rifles to take potshots at opponents, the arms race began. The problem was aiming: two-seater aircraft with observers firing backward were awkward; pusher aircraft with the propeller behind worked but were slower and less maneuverable.

The breakthrough came from synchronization. Roland Garros of France had tried metal deflector plates on his propeller—a crude solution that risked catastrophic failure. When his plane was captured after an emergency landing in April 1915, the Germans tasked Fokker with copying the design. Instead, Fokker developed a mechanical interrupter gear that paused the gun when a propeller blade passed in front of the muzzle.

The result was the 'Fokker Scourge' from mid-1915 to early 1916, a period of German air superiority as the Eindecker outclassed Allied aircraft. Pilots like Max Immelmann and Oswald Boelcke became the first fighter aces. The evolutionary arms race accelerated: Allies captured a synchronization gear, developed their own, designed faster biplanes. Within months, the Nieuport 11 and Airco DH.2 had ended German dominance.

The fighter aircraft demonstrates rapid adaptive radiation under competitive pressure. From the single-wing Eindecker, designs proliferated into biplanes, triplanes, and increasingly specialized configurations. Engines grew more powerful. Armament increased from single to multiple guns. By war's end, fighter aircraft had transformed from experimental novelties into decisive weapons that established the pattern of aerial warfare for the next century.

The path dependence established in WWI persists: modern fighters still fire through the propeller arc (or jet intake path), still prioritize the combination of speed, maneuverability, and forward-firing weapons that Fokker established in 1915.