SPECIAL MISSIONS DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Special missions during the First World War: French secret agents dropped by aircraft behind German lines.

Behind the designation "special" lay missions organised by the intelligence services and the French Aeronautical Service during the Great War.

While their primary purpose was to gather intelligence on the enemy (and sometimes to sabotage railway lines), their defining feature was that agents were transported by night, by aircraft, behind enemy lines… An innovation, certainly, but above all a genuine technical and human challenge, at a time when military aviation was still in its infancy!

These missions were organised in the strictest secrecy by individuals whose creative ingenuity solved countless problems. Particularly hazardous for those who carried them out, they very often achieved the results expected by the high command. They also revealed exceptional personalities — heroic "missionaries" (such as those anonymous customs officers and soldiers from the Ardennes), as well as daredevil pilots (such as the famous Védrines, Guynemer, Navarre, and many other French aces).

A hundred years after the events, a rigorous study of these special missions had yet to be undertaken. This is why Olivier Lahaie decided to fill that historiographical gap.