Fokker D.VII

The D.VII grew out of a series of experimental biplanes drawn at Fokker’s Schwerin works by Reinhold Platz in late 1917. Platz kept the thick, cantilever wing section of the Dr.I triplane, built up on deep box spars so strong that the wings needed no bracing wires, only a single N-shaped strut each side, and hung them on a fuselage of welded steel tube covered in fabric, with the six-cylinder Mercedes in the nose behind a car-type radiator and a small aerofoil fairing between the wheels. Twin Spandau machine guns sat on the decking ahead of the pilot.

The prototype won the first of the German fighter competitions at Adlershof in January 1918, where front-line pilots including Manfred von Richthofen flew the rival types and preferred the Fokker for its easy handling and its ability to hang on its propeller and fire upwards at high altitude. It was ordered in large numbers, and because Fokker’s own works could not build enough, its rival Albatros was told to build it under licence at Johannisthal and at its subsidiary, the Ostdeutsche Albatros Werke (OAW) at Schneidemühl. The first D.VIIs reached Richthofen’s Jagdgeschwader I in late April 1918, just after his death, and from the summer the D.VII(F), with the more powerful BMW IIIa, gave its pilots a clear advantage at height.

By the Armistice more than 3,000 had been ordered and the D.VII equipped most of the Jagdstaffeln on the Western Front; Ernst Udet and Hermann Göring were among its pilots. The terms of 11 November 1918 obliged Germany to surrender its fighters by name, and many D.VIIs were handed over or seized as reparations. Others did not stay put: in 1919 Anthony Fokker smuggled trainloads of aircraft and parts out of Germany to the Netherlands, and the type served on with the air forces of the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Poland and others into the 1920s and beyond.