Channel 5 - World War I in Colour (2003) Part 3 Blood in the Air

World War I in Colour is a Channel 5 documentary series made with the cooperation of the Imperial War Museum, featuring all aspects of the land, sea and air war covered in separate programmes. Up until now, World War 1 had always been seen as a war that happened in black & white, but that was not the reality. It was the first war to see the development of the fighter plane, the introduction of poison gas, the inventions of the tank and the flame thrower and the wide use of machine guns and heavy artillery, which caused such mass destruction. On July 28, 1914 First World War broke out. It was a war that would reap millions of victims, changing the map and fundamentally influence the political power factor. Several of the global world powers were involved in this military conflict that took place between 1914 and 1918. On one side were Germany and Austria-Hungary (the Central Powers), and later Turkey and Bulgaria and on the other hand, France, Russia and Britain (the Triple Entente), together with Serbia, and later Japan, Italy, Romania and the 1917 United States and further a number of other countries. Over 70 million people participated in the War harvested more than 15 million victims, making it one of history's deadliest conflicts. The background was a series of events and increased military activity escalated tensions between the two major blocs of allies. The shots in Sarajevo June 28, 1914 is a single event that is strongly associated with the outbreak of WWI. This documentary provides an historical overview and all materials are carefully processed and converted to color. Using rare archive footage from sources around the World, including Britain's own Imperial War Museum, this 6 part series has been painstakingly colourised using the latest computer-aided technology to bring the first world war to colour, as experienced by those who fought and endured it. Narrated by Kenneth Branagh, this landmark series brings a unique perspective to the events of 1914-1918 which saw 65 million men take arms against one another and a world thrown into chaos.

Part 3 Blood in the Air

“A glorious death! Fight on and fly on to the last drop of blood and the last drop of petrol… a death for a knight.” BARON MANFRED VON RICHTHOFEN MILITARY COMMANDERS BEGAN TO REALISE THAT FLIGHT MIGHT BE USEFUL FOR WAR. When World War I began, powered flight was barely ten years old, but all the major combatant armies had small air forces mainly used for reconnaissance and artillery spotting. Soon pilots were taking up pistols and rifles to attack the enemy and within months machine guns mounted to fire through an aircraft's propellers had been invented, and the first fighters were born. This new warfare was to prove just as deadly as the trenches, where pilots flew into battle with as little as five hours flying experience, with an average life expectancy of 11 days in 1914. For the next three years they grappled over the Western Front in massive dogfights. By 1918 many theorists were arguing that air power would be the decisive factor in any future conflict.

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