Given that the very technology Flight is in Modern Era, I doubt we'll see anything like that. Though I believe the Italians were actually pioneers of usage of airplanes in war, using them in Italo-Turkish War both to scout and to bomb the enemies.
1912, in Libya, an Italian pilot dropped some 'picric acid bombs' on the enemy. Unfortunately, there's strong suspicion that the 'enemy' were actually civilians, so the very first bombing attack started the tradition of inaccurate bombing and rampant over-reporting of the effectiveness of bombing that has continued in virtually all air forces to the present day.
Oh, I know that Flight is in the Modern era
I'm moreso alluding to some of the contents of Flight getting moved around into an earlier tech or civic somehow, which does happen with some civs and leaders, or the civ being able to deploy proto-planes or airships for war that don't need Aerodromes. I would think the subject of aeronautics has a nice rich history that would be fun to expand upon, though I am not much of a historian, so my enthusiasm should be taken lightly.
The development of Flight took place so rapidly once the Wrights' showed how to control a heavier-than-air craft that it's really hard to 'backdate' it much. Think about it: first powered flight in 1903, first bombing attack in 1912, multi-engine bomber/transport by 1913 (Sikorskii's
Ilya Muromets, in Russia), all-metal monoplane combat aircraft by 1918 (Fokker D.VIII) - basically, within fewer turns than it takes to build your first Aerodrome and aircraft Unit, there are short-range fighters, bombers, and commercial transport aircraft available!
The Observation Balloon could be moved back to the Industrial Era, since the US Army used tethered balloons for observation in 1862 (the earliest hot air flights, in France during and before the French Revolution, were a little too unreliable to have much of a military purpose to them), but because they were strictly observation and strictly stationary, they almost become a Siege Support Unit rather than a field unit.
The other possibility would be to provide an 'alternate path' of aviation development at the beginning of the Modern Era: Ferdinand von Zeppelin flew his first rigid airship in 1900 - 3 years before the Wright Flight, and his craft had much longer range and much heavier payload capacity. In fact, Zeppelin-type aircraft had better range and payload than any regular aircraft until the 1930s, so for most of the Modern Era they would be a better bet as Bombers or Air Trade/Passenger service. Of course, they also showed a distressing tendency to get smashed up by 'natural disasters' (the
Hindenberg aside as Not Entirely Natural, both of the US Army's rigid airships, the
Akron and the
Shenandoah, were destroyed by 'ordinary' storms!)
Nicholas II was clueless and self-absorbed. I can't think of many worse choices for Russia, a power-mad monk "adviser" who achieved legendary status as a sorcerer after the frankly hilarious coincidences surrounding his death aside.
