Aside from being a heroic Serbian victory over a numerically superior enemy and the first Allied victory in World War I, the Battle of Cer will be remembered as the first air battle in human history.
The Battle of Cer was fought in August 1914 between Austria-Hungary and Serbia around Mount Cer during the early phases of the Serbian Campaign in World War I.
The battle broke out on the night of August 15, and by August 19, the morale of Austro-Hungarian troops had dropped and thousands of soldiers retreated to Austria-Hungary, while many drowned in the Drina River fleeing in panic. The Serbs re-entered Šabac on August 24, officially ending the battle.
During the ten-day battle, Serbian losses amounted to 3,000 dead and 15,000 wounded. Austro-Hungarian losses were significantly greater: 8,000 dead soldiers, 30,000 wounded, and 4,500 captured.
The success of the battle attracted world attention to Serbia and brought it favor in neutral and allied countries. As a result, many foreigners came to Serbia in late 1914 offering financial, political, humanitarian, and military assistance.
Newspaper articles defending Serbia became more frequent in British newspapers, and the country was so valued that certain cultural groups in Italy supported Italy’s entry into the war on the Allied side, using Serbia and Montenegro as examples.
However, aside from being a heroic Serbian victory over a numerically superior enemy and the first Allied victory in World War I, the Battle of Cer will be remembered in history as the first air battle in human history.
Although the first encounter between two enemy aircraft occurred during the Mexican Revolution in 1913, when two American mercenary pilots deliberately fired pistols into the air instead of at each other, this event cannot be considered the first air battle.
Until the Battle of Cer, combat aircraft were used primarily for reconnaissance missions, where pilots sometimes threw hand grenades, bricks, or grenades at troops on the ground, and very little thought was given to direct combat between two or more aircraft. Only when pilots began receiving pistols did the idea of aerial combat emerge.
The opportunity to test the idea was the Battle of Cer, where for the first time in history two pilots clashed – Miodrag Tomić and an unknown Austro-Hungarian aviator who was on a reconnaissance mission.
Tomić took off in his single-seat Blériot from the airfield in the village of Jevremovac on August 27 at five o’clock in the afternoon. Above Mišar, he encountered an enemy aircraft and they were very close to each other when the reconnaissance gunner opened fire with a pistol. Since Tomić was unarmed, he had to save himself by diving sharply. This was the first exchange of fire between two aircraft in history.
Within a week, all aircraft in the Serbian and Austro-Hungarian fleets were equipped with machine guns. Thus, a completely new chapter in the history of warfare was opened.
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Source: Mediji; Photo: Wikimedia Creative Commons