Bloody April

"Bloody April" refers to the catastrophic losses suffered by Britain's Royal Flying Corps over the Western Front in April 1917, during the Battle of Arras. In that month German fighter squadrons inflicted casualties on British aircrew at a rate that far exceeded their own losses, and the period became a byword for the deadliness of air combat in the First World War.

The German advantage rested on superior machines and tactics. Pilots flying the Albatros and Halberstadt scouts outclassed many of the aging or under-armed British types still in service, and German formations led by aces such as Manfred von Richthofen, the famed "Red Baron," exacted a heavy toll. The life expectancy of a newly arrived British pilot was measured in a matter of hours of flying time.

Bloody April forced a hard reckoning within the British air service. It accelerated the introduction of better aircraft, more thorough training before frontline posting, and improved tactics, changes that helped the Allies regain the initiative in the air later in 1917 and into 1918.