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The ''Armée de l'Air'' (literally, "army of the air") is the name of the French Air Force in its native language. It has borne this name only from August 1933 when it was still under the jurisdiction of the army. This article deals exclusively with the history of the French air force from its earliest beginnings (but not French naval aviation, the ''Aéronautique Navale'').〔Andre. Van Haute, ''Pictorial History of the French Air Force: 1909–40''; ''Pictorial History of the French Air Force: 1941–1974'' (2 vol. 1975)〕 ==Military aviation to 1914== Aviation in France was the preserve of pioneers like Henri Farman and Louis Blériot during the first decade of the 20th century. Like many other armies, however, the French soon saw the potential in aeroplanes as tools for reconnaissance duties. The French collective memory of the humiliating defeat of the army at the hands of the Prussians during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871 was still very fresh, and France was preparing to face Germany again. Indeed, it had already planned to invade Germany using the strategy and tactics formulated in the so-called “Plan XVII”. From December 1909, the French Department of War began to send army officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) from all branches of the army, especially engineering and artillery, to undergo flying training at civilian schools as “pupil-pilots” (''élèves-pilotes''), including at places such as Rheims and Bron. (Rheims was where the famous ''Grande Semaine d'Aviation de la Champagne'' had taken place in late August 1909.) In March 1910, the ''Établissement Militaire d'Aviation'' (EMA) was created to conduct experiments with aircraft. The ''Aéronautique Militaire'' was created, as a branch of the Army, on 22 October 1910,〔"France: Air Force (Armée de l'Air), in Christopher H. Sterling, ''Military Communications: From Ancient Times to the 21st century'' (ABC-CLIO, 2008) p168〕 under the command of General Pierre Roques. Even so, it was not until mid-1911 the first military aviation brevets were awarded to army pilots. Furthermore, it was not until a law was passed on 29 March 1912 that the ''Aéronautique Militaire'' formally became part of the armed forces. Training of military pilots was the same as civilian pilots until 1910 when the General Staff introduced the military pilot license. The military pilot badge N°1 was issued to Lieutenant Charles de Tricornot de Rose, who first completed all the military requirements. Lt. de Rose was trained in the Bleriot Flying School in Pau, in southwest of France, the city where the Wright Brothers had established the first aviation school in history just a year earlier. Even though the German army was forming its own embryonic air arm — the ''Fliegertruppen des deutschen Kaiserreiches'' — at the time, many consider the French military's ''Aéronautique Militaire'' to be the world's first “air force”, even if it did not become the ''Armée de l'Air'' until August 1933, for it was still under army jurisdiction. Nearly a year after that, it finally became independent on 2 July 1934, albeit 16 years after the British Royal Flying Corps (RFC) in conjunction with the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS), as both linked army/naval air arms gained their independence as they combined to become the Royal Air Force (RAF) on April 1, 1918. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of the Armée de l'Air (1909–42)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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