Nearly 3,300 D.VII aircraft were produced in the second half of 1918. It made a “dramatic impact on the air war over the Western Front; German pilots doubled their rate of scoring victories after they started flying it.” DVII’s achieved more victories than all other German aircraft between August 1914 and April 1918.
The metal tubed fuselage and the thick box-spar wing coupled with the 180hp Mercedes a D.IIIaü, and later the over compressed 185hp BMW IIIa V6 in-line engines (125mph) gave German pilots the ability to aggressively climb and maneuver the D.VII to its limits. Due to these factors, its strength influenced subsequence 1920’s American biplane design.
Flown by the top aces such as Ernst Udet, the D.VII eventually equipped 78 Jagdstaffeln.(fighter squadron) when the war ended in November 1918 with 1,069 in service. 142 went to the U.S. Army Air Service due to the Armistice Agreement ordering Germany to turn over 1700 fighter & bomber aircraft including all D.VIIs.
MAM has two flyable, replica aircraft representing the Fokker D.VII. One, N1918F represents Fokker 7795/18 one of five stationed at Langley Field but destroyed in a 6 December 1922 over the field midair collision with a Martin NBS-1. It was built by Fred Berg in 1959, is perhaps the most authentic with its 1918 Hall-Scott (Mercedes copy) engine and factory five-color Fünffarbiger camouflage covering that is imprinted into the fabric, not painted on. The second, N1918P, was built by Byron Peterson in 1991 and represents a late number (6880/18) DVII of Royal Prussian Jasta 33 flown by its CO Lt Carl August von Schoenbeck to the end of the war (8-vic WW2 Major General).
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