Fokker D.VII

German fighter plane

The Fokker D.VII aircraft was recognized as the best German fighter of the First World War. Its history dates back to the second half of 1917. At that time, at the Anthony Fokker aviation plant in Schwerin near Berlin, tests were carried out on test aircraft with a slow-moving airfoil with a characteristic thick profile. In September 1917, the construction of the plane designated as V.XL began. It was a slow-support biplane with a Mercedes D.llla in-line engine with a capacity of 160 HP. In December, another, modified V.18 aircraft was built, which in relation to the V.XI had a longer fuselage, slightly retracted upper lobe and changed vertical tail. In January 1918, both machines entered the competition for a new German aviation fighter. The experimental V.XI turned out to be the best among those presented there and after minor modifications it was sent to mass production as the Fokker D.VII. The original 300-order order was soon increased, requiring the Albatros plant to build aircraft. Thus, the serial Fokkers D.VII were produced both at the Fokker plants in Schwerin and the Albatros factories in Johannisthal and Piła (OAW). The first serial aircraft were handed over to the military in March 1918. At the end of April, there were only 19 machines of this type at the front, but the number of new D.VII Fokkers grew to reach 800 in August. By the end of the war, approximately 3,300 D.VII Fokkers had been manufactured. The plane was characterized by good performance and ease of piloting. He was a popular and valued machine of German pilots. Many aces flew on the Fokkers D.VII, including Ernst Udet, Hermann Goering, Erich Lowenhardt, Franz Buchner, Lothar von Richthofen and Rudolf Berthold.

The career of this aircraft continued after the war. In November 1918, Anthony Fokker "smuggled" nearly 100 ready planes, several hundred engines, and the equipment necessary to continue aviation production to the Netherlands. He opened a new factory in Amsterdam, where in 1920-22 he built about 100 copies of the Fokker D. VII. The fame of the plane was so significant that in the truce ending the war, the Allies had to hand over military equipment, including, in the first place, the D.VII type aircraft. In this way, the Fokker D.VII planes went to, among others, France, Great Britain, Belgium and the United States.

The Polish military aviation was equipped with a total of about 50 Fokker D.VII examples, including 25 purchased in Germany, 20 in France, 3 obtained from the assignment of the Commission for War Reparations and two acquired in Greater Poland. In the years 1919-20, these aircraft were used primarily by the 13th and 15th Fighter Squadrons, taking part in the Polish-Soviet war of 1920. Later, the Fokkers were used as training planes, and the last of them was withdrawn from service in 1927.

The Fokker D.VII was a freestanding single seat mixed design fighter biplane. The truss hull, welded from steel pipes, covered with a cloth in the middle and rear part and a duralumin sheet in the front part. Wings of a wooden structure, double-spar, covered with linen. The upper lobe is based on metal (profiled) struts and inter-leaf struts.
The tail is made of steel tubes covered with linen. Fixed chassis based on profiled steel pipes, amortized with a rubber cord.
The drive was initially a six-cylinder inline Mercedes D.llla engine with 160 hp, later also a BMW D.llla (180 hp). The aircraft was armed with two 7.92 mm Spandau machine guns with an ammunition reserve of 500 rounds per 1 km.

Basic technical data: (data in brackets refer to an airplane with a BMW D.llla engine)
Span - 8.90 m
Length - 6.95 m
Height - 2.85 m
Bearing area - 20.5 m²
Curb weight - 650 (670) kg
Total weight - 850 (880) kg
Top speed - 187 (205) km / h
Service ceiling - 6400 (7000) m
Range - 400 (450) km

Anton Herman Gerard Fokker was born in 1890 in Java (Dutch East Indies). At the age of 20, he came to Germany, where he built his first plane, on which he learned to fly. Two more successful models allowed him to set up his own aircraft factory. Fokker was the author of the idea of a machine gun synchronizer, in which they could shoot through a propeller. This gave German pilots a significant advantage in aerial combat. The main designer and constructor of the planes in the factory was Reinhold Platz. He could not make any calculations, but he had a brilliant design sense. It was thanks to him that over 40 different models of aircraft were created in the factory. Initially, planes (in Germany) were marked according to number of lobes, e.g. E-III is a third type monoplane (E-eindecker) D-VII is a seventh type biplane (D-doppeldecker) etc.

The Fokker D-VII plane very quickly became the best construction of that end. At the end of April 1918. 18 planes were delivered to the front, but already in August there were 800 of them.

All German squadrons sought the acquisition of these aircraft. They beat all the Allied constructions, the losses of which began to grow rapidly. However, it was too late to regain the air superiority of the D-VII Fokkers, there was still not enough and the pilot training was not kept up. They also quickly became part of the equipment of the Allied fighter aviation, matching the Fokker, SE-5a and SPAD-XIII.

During the war, about 3,500 D-VII Fokkers were produced, they were still produced in the Netherlands for a long time, where the Fokker managed to escape along with the entire factory and several hundred aircraft. After the end of the war, the Allied states divided the captured Fokkers among themselves. France and the USA received the most airplanes, they were used by Belgian fighter units. Switzerland and the Netherlands. They were used in small amounts in the USSR, Hungary and Lithuania. Latvia as well as Sweden, Finland and Italy. Fokkers survived in some school units until the late 1930s.

In Poland, after independence, a dozen or so Fokkers left at airports by the Germans were taken over, mainly the Ławica airport in Poznań. Then in 1919. 20 planes were imported from France and then a further 20 from Germany. These planes, along with other types of fighter planes, became part of the equipment of the emerging Polish aviation units. They took part in all military conflicts in the years 1918-1921: the South-Eastern Front, with Germany in Greater Poland, in the east with Soviet Russia in Silesian and Lithuania uprisings In total, Poland had 50 D-VII Fokkers. They served in fighter squadrons until 1926. Then the remaining units they were used for training and training until the end of the 1920s. The Fokker D-VII is a single-seat fighter biplane of mixed construction. Truss fuselage with a rectangular cross-section, welded from steel pipes, rounded spine, profiled sheet of plywood. The whole thing is covered with laced cloth on the bottom of the fuselage. The front part is covered with removable aluminum sheets.

Wooden, double-girder wings with a thick profile. The leading edge is covered with plywood, the rest of the wing with Lotka's canvas only on the upper wing, driven by a cable mechanism. The lower wing, not divided, passed through the cutouts in the fuselage. The tail is made of steel tubes covered with linen. The vertical stabilizer was positioned obliquely to the fuselage axis to compensate for the wing torque. Two-legged undercarriage, with the axle covered with a profiled wing, creating an additional load-bearing surface. The pilot's seat was placed in an open cockpit and was adjustable in height. On the control stick there were separate rifle triggers and a lever regulating the engine speed. The Fokker engine is a 6-cylinder, in-line, water-cooled Mercedes D.Ill (118kW). later BMW-llla (136kW) or Austro-Daimler (196kW). The car radiator could be disassembled without removing the propeller. Two-chamber tank held 90 l of fuel and a chamber for 20 l of oil. The plane was armed with two 7.9mm Spandau 08/15 machine guns. or Parabellum cal 7.9mm They were attached to special hooks on the back of the fuselage, in front of the pilot's cabin.

Technical data of the Fokker D-VII aircraft:
Upper wing span - 8.90 m
Lower wing span - 7.01 m
Total length - 6.95 m
Height - 2.85 m.
Curb weight - 670 kg.
Gross weight is 880kg.
Maximum speed - 200 km / h.
Service ceiling - 6400m.
Flight time -1.7h