In the use of seaplanes the British were early far in the lead of other nations, as we shall see in a later chapter. And in the prompt and efficient employment of such aircraft as she possessed at the opening of the war she far outclassed Germany which in point of numbers was her superior. At that moment Great Britain possessed about five hundred machines, of which two hundred were seaplanes, and fifteen dirigibles. Despite this puny force, however, British aviators flew across the channel in such numbers to the headquarters in France that when the Expeditionary Army arrived on the scene it found ready to its hand a scouting force vastly superior to anything the Germans could put in the air. It is no exaggeration to say that the Royal Flying Corps saved Sir John French's army in his long and gallant fight against the overwhelming numbers of the foe.
Russia before the war had hidden her aeronautic activities behind the dreary curtain of miles of steppe and marsh that shut her off from the watchfulness of Western Europe. Professional aviators, indeed, had gone thither to make exhibition flights for enormous purses and had brought back word of huge airplanes in course of construction and an eager public interest in the subject of flying. But the secrecy which all the governments so soon to be plunged in war sought to throw about their production of aircraft was especially easy for Russia in her isolation. When the storm burst her air fleet was not less than eight hundred airplanes, and at least twenty-five dirigibles.
A competent authority estimates that at the outbreak of the war the various Powers possessed a total of 4980 aircraft of all sorts. This sounds like a colossal fleet, but by 1917 it was probably multiplied more than tenfold. Of the increase of aircraft we can judge only by guesswork. The belligerents keep their output an inviolable secret. It was known that many factories with a capacity of from thirty to fifty 'planes a week were working in the chief belligerent lands, that the United States was shipping aircraft in parts to avoid violation of neutrality laws before their entrance upon the war, and that American capital operated factories in Canada whence the completed craft could be shipped regardless of such laws. How great was the loss to be offset against this new construction is a subject on which no authoritative figures are available.