Remember films like The Blue Max, The Red Baron or Flyboys? They all depicted WWI aerial warfare, in machines invented some 15 years earlier. Instead of defined runways, pilots of that era landed and took off from large, broad fields, which always allowed them to fly into the prevailing wind. One of the reasons those big fields were necessary was the lack of early airplanes' maneuverability—some had control-authority issues at low speeds—so the range of available runway directions was expanded to include them all.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/flight-safety/technique/five-crosswind-fixes