In 1914, when World War I began, the aeroplane was so new the British had never used it in battle before. Eager recruits, some as young as 17, rushed to join the British army's new aircraft service - the Royal Flying Corps - and quickly came up against the Red Baron and the German hunting squadrons. By the end of the war in 1918, a new and terrifying form of warfare had been devised, the skies had been turned into battlefields and the cost to aviation pioneers had been enormous. In this documentary, two modern-day pilots face the same challenges as the aviators of World War I, in order to find out how aerial warfare evolved so quickly in just four years. Andy Offer and Mark Cutmore are both Red Arrows pilots, the elite of the elite; hugely skilled pilots who served in RAF operations in Afghanistan and the former Yugoslavia respectively. Here they fly original First World War aircraft and carry out the key challenges the planes faced in the war: photo reconnaissance, artillery ranging a