Escadron de Chasse 2/4 La Fayette in 2016 celebrates its 100 anniversary. From the beginning of World War I
“the war that will end all wars” in Europe many Americans travelled to Europe and offered their volunteer
services to Britain and France in the war against the German and Austrian‐Hungarian Monarchy.
Prior to WWI, the French invented manned flight with hot air and hydrogen balloons. They invented sea‐
planes in 1905. The French aviator Roland Garros, invented the fighter aircraft after he joined Service Aero‐
nautigue at the beginning of the war. He and aircraft designer Raymound Saulnier collaborated in his idea
that a forward firing machine gun attached to the aircraft could be used as a weapon to bring down an air‐
craft. And, it was Garros who achieved the first successful victory by an aircraft with a fixed forward firing
machine gun. Thus the fighter aircraft was born.
Garros succeeded in shooting down several German aircraft, but one day his airplane developed a mechani‐
cal failure and this forced him to land behind the German lines. While he tried to destroy his Morane‐Saulnier
Type L after landing, the Germans recovered enough of the wreckage to evaluate the design and get their
own fighter designed by the Dutch Anthony Fokker, thus the first mass produced fighter mono‐
plane the Fokker Eindecker was born.