Korte geschiedenis van de Fokker D.VII

[Jorri]

Hallo allemaal,

Ik heb een korte geschiedenis van de Fokker D.VII opgesteld, om te plaatsen op een website die ik aan het bouwen ben. Het is misschien een wat gekleurd verhaal, maar het is ook bedoeld om mensen wat enthausiast te maken over het toestel.

Ik ga tevens een kort verhaaltje schrijven over de praktische kwaliteiten en prestaties van de D.VII in de lucht, een artikeltje over de D.VII in Nederland, en een artikeltje over de D.VII in Amerika.

Ik zou het heel fijn vinden als jullie de tekst door wilden lezen. Correcties op feiten en advies over de tekst- en zinsopbouw zijn allemaal welkom.

Ik hoop de tekst nog in te korten, daar moet ik nog wat op broeden.

Op de website zal ik de tekst aanvullen met foto's e.d.

Fokker D.VII in WWI
The First World War introduced the airplane as a war machine on a grand scale. Depending on tactics and who had the best planes, air superiority switched back and forth between the Entente forces and the Central Powers. In 'bloody april', 1917, the German Albatros sesquiplane with its heavy inline engine, strong monocoque fuselage and twin machineguns dominated the skies over France. But by 1918, the Albatros was long outdated and outclassed by newer British and French designs.

Germany's Luftstreitkräfte desperately needed a new fighter, and for this the Idflieg (Inspektion der Fliegertruppen) issued a 'fighter competition', where veteran fighter pilots from the front would trial the latest creations of the various aircraft companies. This proved to be an excellent decision, that allowed the Fokker Flugzeugwerke to come out with an airplane that set a standard for the future of aviation: the Fokker D.VII.

Dutchman Anthony Herman Gerard Fokker had achieved fame at the start of the air war by creating the first modern fighter plane for Germany, when he mounted a synchronised machinegun on the nose of a Fokker Eindecker, capable of shooting through the propeller arc without hitting the blades. The Entente air forces had no answer to this new secret weapon, and in 1915 the 'Fokker Scourge' was a fact. But the trick got out, and one and later two forward-firing machineguns became the standard armament for fighter planes on both sides of the conflict. Airplane designs improved, and Fokker failed to come up with competitive designs to keep up with the ongoing arms race between the warring nations. Fokker was reduced to license-building aircraft of the A.E.G. company, in addition to constructing mediocre designs from his own office.

Then in 1916, Reinhold Platz took the place of head designer at the Fokker factory, and Fokker took off in a new direction of design innovation and revolution. Like Fokker himself, Platz had no educated knowledge on the science of flight, but he was a man of practical knowledge. After gaining further experience working together with Hugo Junkers, Fokker and Platz achieved their first moderate succes in late 1917 with the iconic Fokker Dr.I Triplane. The triplane, powered by the Oberursel U.II rotary engine, climbed well and turned as fast as any contemporary adversary. But it lacked speed, and manufacturing faults resulted in fatal crashes. Despite being the plane that the Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen, brought to to fame, the Dr.I did not answer the need for a modern replacement for the Albatros.

Fokker's main entry for Idflieg's fighter competition was The Fokker V.11 prototype. Like the Dr.I, the V.11 also had thick profile cantilever wings, a welded steel fuselage, and flying rudder. But it was a biplane, powered by the Mercedes D.III 6 cylinder in-line engine, which was the standard power unit for German fighters ever since the Albatros first came out in 1916. Just as the evolution of airframes had stagnated in Germany, so had the design of new engines. This demanded that the new airframe gave the best possible performance, to even have a chance to compete with the Entente fighters, which were powered by the strong V-8 Hispano Suiza engine and its derivatives.

Completed only just before the competition, Fokker barely had time for a quick test flight in the V11, and found the plane to be dangerously unstable and prone to spin. Completely against Idflieg regulations, that only allowed 'essential maintenance', Fokker brought in two welders from his factory and practically reconstructed the plane overnight, lengthening the fuselage and adding a vertical tailfin, in time for the veteran pilots to trial it.

Thus the D.VII came to be, and a victory at the fighter competition ensured Fokker of large orders to make it the new mainstay fighter of the German Luftstreitkräfte; larger even than the Fokker factory could handle. And out of a total of approximately 3,300 produced before the armistice, the majority of D.VII's had been license-built by Albatros (Alb) and Ostdeutsche Albatros Werke (OAW). The first planes arrived at the western front in april 1918.

The D.VII performed as well at the front as it had done at the trials, and it proved equal or superior in many aspects to its French and British adversaries. Installment of the new BMW III 6 cylinder in-line engine, designed with high compression for superior high altitude performance, improved its qualities even further. With the new engine, the plane was designated Fokker D.VIIf, and it won a reputation as the best fighter of the war.

It was too little too late, and on November 11 ,1918, the armistice went into effect: Germany had lost the war. In its seven months of service, the D.VII had managed to leave quite an impression with the allied victors, and the plane was the only one mentioned by name in the armistice terms, to be surrendered to the allies. Its history was far from over yet, and it would continue to inspire aircraft design and serve in air forces around the world well beyond the next decade.