Obviously the Germans had not yet solved the problem of air supremacy to their complete satisfaction. But their engineers and designers were busy thinking it over, and soon they had ready a number of swifter airplanes, foremost among which were probably the _Aviatik_ and the _Halberstadt_. The _Aviatik_ made great claims of superior accomplishments over the front lines. German pilots boasted that it had a "ceiling" (a climbing capacity) of almost 16,000 feet with pilot, observer and a fuel supply. This was over 4,000 feet greater altitude than that which any other Allied or enemy machine could reach under similar conditions. The machine had an upper wing span of 40 feet, 8 inches, while its lower wing measured 35 feet, 5 inches from tip to tip. It had a strong armor of steel tubing surrounding the compartment or "cockpit" which held the seats of the pilot and observer.
The _Aviatik_ was an efficient bombing biplane of its day, although larger and more powerful machines have since come into the field to supersede it. It was fitted with metal bomb-launching tubes at either side of the bow, and the bombs were released by pulling a cable connected with the releasing trigger. The _Aviatik_ was armed in addition with rotating machine guns, able to fire in any direction in an aerial battle.
The _Halberstadt_ was a swift fighting machine or speed scout, which made its appearance in the third year of the war and proved efficient and reliable. This and the combat planes that followed it showed greater and greater speed until by 1917 the scout machines were flying at 150 miles per hour and climbing to altitudes as high as 22,000 feet.
It was the bombing plane, however, that appealed most strongly to the German mind as an instrument of destruction. Tired, perhaps, of their efforts to produce a fighting machine which should be without its match in aerial warfare, they focussed their attention about this time upon the bomber, which in 1917 was playing an ever more important role in the struggle for air supremacy. Early in 1917, the flower of their creative genius took to the air. It was the _Gotha_ biplane, and at the time of its début it proved one of the most difficult machines to attack and down of any of those flying for the Hun. The _Gun-tunnel Gotha_ it was familiarly called, owing to the unusual means of defense against pursuers that had been devised for it.