WAR

Becker.
in September Hermann Becker and Jasta 12 were equipped with the Fokker D
VII, "the best German scout machine of the war," according to
Becker. Between
the end of April 1918 and the Armistice, some 3000 D VII's were delivered to
first-line squadrons. The aeroplane had been selected for mass-production as a
result of the excellent performance it had given at competitive trials held at
Johannisthal in January. In order to launch production as quickly as possible, the
Albatros works was ordered to construct D VII's under sub-contract. This was
a moral victory for Tony Fokker; the crowning irony is that the Albatros works
produced more D VII's than the
Fokker works.
With two standard power plants, the 1 60-horsepower Mercedes D III or the
1 85-horsepower BMW Ilia, the Fokker D VII had a top speed of about 120
miles per hour. Both the Mercedes and the BMW (Bavarian Motor Works) were
six-cylinder, in-line, water-cooled engines. The fuselage of the D VII was of
welded steel tubing covered with fabric all over except for sheet metal panels
around the engine. An experimental all-wood model was built by Albatros just
to show that it could be done in the event of a steel shortage. The all-wood
model, 40 pounds heavier than the standard steel tubing model, merely showed
how difficult it was to improve on the products of the Platz/Fokker combination.
The D VII had cantilever wings like the Dr I, "one-piece" structures whose
spars ran all the way through from one end to the other. Thus the bottom wing,
instead of being made in two panels with one panel bolted on each side of the
fuselage, was one piece attached to the bottom of the fuselage. The two wings
together made a "cell" that was unusually strong.
The D VII was easy to fly, completely devoid of any tricky habits, responsive
and manoeuvrable all the way up to its ceiling, and when it stalled, stalls were
straight forward with no tendency to whip around into a spin. The D VII
was said to make good pilots out of poor ones. It was not so manoeuvrable
as the Sopwith Camel, or Fokker Triplane, but it was as manoeuvrable as the Spad
or the S.E.5, and its ruggedness, speed, and consistent performance up to ceiling
made up for any deficiencies.
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