One peculiar thing that has endured from the ages of the Red Baron through today is the custom of pilots and aircrews carrying so-called “bail-out guns” to be used on the ground should they lose their main ride.
The first instance of opposing aircraft encountering each other while over the battlefield is thought to have occurred when high-flying American soldiers of fortune Dean Ivan Lamb and Phil Rader, each at the controls of early fabric-covered biplanes, fired pistols at each other in the first “dogfight.” The action while flying for rival sides during the Mexican Revolution in November 1913 was bloodless, but the habit of Yankee flying birdmen carrying hog legs with them aloft persisted.
During the Great War, while Americans flew more advanced British- and French-made fighters against the Germans, the pilots often carried their M1917 Colt and S&W .45 ACP revolvers and M1911 pistols with them, even while Vickers and Lewis machine guns were their primary weapons.
Not just a preux chevalier throwback, the handguns became mandatory to a degree, part of the survival kit with the plane – often for good reason.
In 1924, during the famed “First Around the World Flight,” Army pilot Maj. Frederick Martin and his mechanic, Sgt. Alva Harvey, were forced to walk for 10 days across Alaska to civilization after their plane crashed into the side of a mountain in the fog.
Note the pistol belt on Harvey’s hip, complete with a revolver. (Photo: National Archives 342-FH-3B-7971-11517AS)
More in my column at Guns.com.