First Fighters

The first recorded aerial combat between airplanes took place in November 1913, during a civil war in Mexico. Pilot Phillip Rader, flying on the side of General Victoriano Huerta’s forces,
exchanged pistol shots with Dean I. Lamb, a pilot serving with the army of the revolutionary leader Venustiano Carranza. Neither plane nor pilot was hit.

Fighter planes flew into combat for the first time in World War I (1914-1918). The first plane shot down by another airplane was a German air­craft, attacked in October 1914 by a French Voisin fighter.

A typical early fighter plane was the British FB5 Gunbus. This biplane had a crew of two and a top speed of only 70 miles per hour (113 kilometers per hour). The very first fighter planes had not been fitted with weapons-pilots from opposing sides, meeting in midair, exchanged pistol shots. The Gunbus, however, was more lethal; it had a single 0.303-inch machine gun, fired by

a gunner who sat in the nose of the airplane. To stop bullets from hitting the propeller, the Gunbus had a backward­facing propeller behind the pilot.