+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Fokker D.VII was a German World War I fighter aircraft designed by Reinhold Platz of the Fokker-Flugzeugwerke. Late in 1917, Fokker built the experimental V 11 biplane, fitted with the standard Mercedes D.IIIa engine. In January 1918, IdFlieg held a fighter competition at Adlershof, and for the first time, front line pilots participated in the evaluation and selection of new fighters. Fokker submitted the V 11 along with several other prototypes. Manfred von Richthofen flew the V 11 and found it tricky, unpleasant and directionally unstable in a dive. On short notice, Platz reacted and lengthened the rear fuselage by one structural bay and added a triangular fin in front of the rudder. Richthofen tested the modified V 11 and praised it as the best aircraft of the competition. It offered excellent performance from the outdated Mercedes engine, yet was safe and easy to fly. Richthofen's recommendation virtually decided the competition but he was not alone in recommending it. Fokker immediately received a provisional order for 400 production aircraft, which were named D.VII by IdFlieg.
Fokker's factory was not up to the task of meeting all D.VII production orders and IdFlieg directed Albatros and AEG to build the D.VII under license, though AEG did not ultimately produce any aircraft. Because the Fokker factory did not use detailed plans as part of its production process, Fokker simply sent a D.VII airframe for Albatros to copy. Albatros paid Fokker a five percent royalty for every D.VII they built under license. Albatros Flugzeugwerke and its subsidiary, Ostdeutsche Albatros Werke (OAW), built the D.VII at factories in Johannisthal [Fokker D.VII (Alb)] and Schneidemühl [Fokker D.VII (OAW)] respectively. Corresponding aircraft markings included the type designation and factory suffix, immediately before the individual serial number.
Some parts were not interchangeable between aircraft produced at different factories, even between Albatros and OAW. Each manufacturer tended to differ in both nose paint styles and the patterning and layout of their engine compartment cooling louvers on the sides of the nose. OAW produced examples were delivered with distinctive mauve and green splotches on the cowling. All D.VIIs were produced with either the five-color (“Fünffarbig”) or, less often, the four-color (“Vierfarbig”) lozenge camouflage covering, except for early Fokker-produced D.VIIs, which had a streaked green fuselage. However, these factory camouflage finishes were often overpainted in the field with colorful paint schemes or insignia for the Jasta or for a specific pilot, making identification during aerial combat easier.
The D.VII entered squadron service with Jasta 10 in early May 1918. When the Fokker D.VII appeared on the Western Front in April 1918, Allied pilots at first underestimated the new fighter because of its squarish, ungainly appearance, but quickly revised their view. The type had many important advantages over the Albatros and Pfalz scouts. Unlike the Albatros scouts, the D.VII could dive without any fear of structural failure. The D.VII was also noted for its high manoeuvrability and ability to climb, its remarkably docile stall and reluctance to spin. It could "hang on its prop" without stalling for brief periods of time, spraying enemy aircraft from below with machine gun fire. These handling characteristics contrasted with contemporary Allied scouts such as the Camel and SPAD, which stalled sharply and spun vigorously.
Nevertheless, several aircraft suffered rib failures and fabric shedding on the upper wing. Heat from the engine sometimes ignited phosphorus ammunition until additional cooling louvers were installed on the metal sides of the engine cowling panels, and fuel tanks sometimes broke at the seams through high G loads and a twisting, wooden airframe. Aircraft built by the Fokker factory at Schwerin were noted for their lower standard of workmanship and materials. But despite some faults, the D.VII proved to be a remarkably successful design and a true fighter benchmark, leading to the familiar aphorism that it could turn a mediocre pilot into a good one and a good pilot into an ace.
In September 1918, eight D.VIIs were delivered to Bulgaria. Late in 1918, the Austro-Hungarian company Magyar Általános Gépgyár (MÁG, Hungarian General Machine Company) commenced licensed production of the D.VII with Austro-Daimler engines. Production continued after the end of the war, with as many as 50 aircraft completed.
Richthofen died days before the D.VII began to reach the Jagdstaffeln and never flew it in combat. Other pilots, including Erich Löwenhardt and Hermann Göring, quickly racked up victories and generally lauded the design. Aircraft availability was limited at first, but by July there were 407 in service. Larger numbers became available by August, by which point D.VIIs had achieved 565 victories. The D.VII eventually equipped 46 Jagdstaffeln. When the war ended in November, 775 D.VII aircraft were in service, and they were outfitted with various, ever more powerful engines, but the aircraft remained outwardly virtually identical. Some late production machines had a rare BMW IIIa 6-cyl. water-cooled in-line piston engine fitted. It had a continuous output of 137.95 kW (185 hp), but also an emergency rating of 180 kW (240 hp) at low level that gave the aircraft a top speed in level flight of 200 km/h (124 mph; 108 kn) and a phenomenal rate of climb (four times as good at low altitude as the early machines and still twice as good at higher altitudes), even though at the risk of engine damage.
After the war, the Allies confiscated large numbers of D.VII aircraft after the Armistice. The United States Army and Navy evaluated no less than 142 captured examples and used them in what would today be called “aggressor” units for dissimilar air combat in training and for the development of indigenous military aircraft. Several of these aircraft were re-engined with American-built Liberty L-6 motors, which were very similar in appearance to the D.VII's original German power plants and hard to tell apart. France, Great Britain and Canada also received numbers of war prizes, but these aircraft did not enter active service. Other countries used the D.VII operationally, though: the Polish deployed approximately 50 aircraft during the Polish-Soviet War, using them mainly for ground attack missions; the Hungarian Soviet Republic used a number of D.VIIs, both built by MAG and ex-German aircraft in the Hungarian-Romanian War of 1919; the Dutch, Swiss, and Belgian air forces also operated the D.VII. The aircraft proved still so popular that Fokker completed and sold a large number of D.VII airframes that he had smuggled into the Netherlands after the Armistice. As late as 1929, the Alfred Comte company manufactured eight new D.VII airframes under license for the Swiss Fliegertruppe.
General characteristics:
Crew: 1
Length: 6.95 m (22 ft 10 in)
Wingspan: 8.9 m (29 ft 2 in)
Height: 2.75 m (9 ft 0 in)
Wing area: 20.5 m² (221 sq ft)
Empty weight: 670 kg (1,477 lb)
Gross weight: 906 kg (1,997 lb)
Powerplant:
1 × 137.95 kW (185 hp) BMW IIIa 6-cyl. water-cooled in-line piston engine with a 180 kW (240 hp)
emergency only rating at low level, driving a wooden 2-bladed fixed-pitch propeller
Performance:
Maximum speed: 189 km/h (117 mph, 102 kn) at normal power
200 km/h (124 mph; 108 kn) at emergency power
Range: 266 km (165 mi, 144 nmi)
Service ceiling: 6,000 m (20,000 ft)
Rate of climb: up to 9.52 metres per second (1,874 ft/min) at emergency rating
Time to altitude:
1,000 m (3,281 ft) in 1 minutes 40 seconds
2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 4 minutes 5 seconds
3,000 m (9,843 ft) in 13 minutes 49 seconds
4,000 m (13,123 ft) in 10 minutes 15 seconds
5,000 m (16,404 ft) 14 minutes 0 seconds
6,000 m (19,685 ft) 18 minutes 45 seconds
Armament:
2× synchronized 7.92 mm (0.312 in) LMG 08/15 "Spandau" machine guns,
firing through the propeller disc
The kit and its assembly:
My fifth submission for the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com, and a very simple one, since the kit was built OOB. Inspiration came from a profile of a captured Albatros D.III in USAAC markings, unfortunately without further explanation. However, the aircraft sported a garish paint scheme, including bright green and even pink, so that I assumed that it would be not only WWI booty, but also in some operational use, since the paint scheme/camouflage did not look like a German pattern, but rather like an American design, similar to the aircraft operated by the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) in continental Europe, just with bright colors.
When I checked options for a different aircraft to apply this idea to, I came across the common Fokker D.VII and the fact that a lot of these aircraft had been captured and tested/flown by the USAAC – and then the weird scheme started to make sense, and this what-if model was born.
The D.VII kit is the ESCI offering, which was released in 1983 but is actually a mold from 1968. I thought I gave it a chance, instead of the Revell kit, which dates back to 1963 and is rumored to be not a pleasant build. The bet and newest one in 1:72 is probably the Eduard kit, which also has the benefit of offering optional parts for various production versions.
As a small biplane model, the ESCI kit is a simple, straightforward affair, and no major conversions were made, I just added a pilot figure, because the ESCI kit lacks one as well as any interior detail except for a kind of tub that it molded into the fuselage halves. IIRC, the figure I used comes from a Revell biplane, and I had to chop the legs off to make it fit into the D.VII’s tight cockpit. However, this solution had the benefit that I did not have to worry about any interior details.
Another weak point of the ESCI kit is that it lacks some finer details like the boarding ladder or handles at the tail. These were scratched with thin wire. Overall fit is also not the best – PSR on the fuselage halves, and on some visible ejection markers (e.g. under the single-part wings) and sinkholes. Esp. the integral cockpit tub with its rather massive walls left visible dents in the flanks that had to be filled! On the other side, the fabric structure on the wings and the fuselage is nicely reproduced, and the cowling is apparently from a late production D.VII with additional/bigger air scoops, so I decided that my model would also be one of the final machines with the uprated BMW engine.
A problem that cannot be blamed on the mold but rather the specific 2nd hand kit I bought is that the stabilizer was missing – it had probably detached from the sprue long ago, and slipped through the box lid, gone and eaten by some carpet monster… ☹ I had to improvise and decided to cut a replacement stabilizer from 1mm styrene sheet. I used the painting instructions (which are almost 1:72 scale) as benchmark and tailored a piece of sheet into shape, sanding away the edges for some light curvature and also added some shallow grooves to mimic the rib structure. Not perfect, but I also did not want to spend too much time on this. As a bonus, though, I added the (tiny) rudder levers of the tail surfaces and the ailerons, which originally are also not part of the ESCI mold. These were later, after painting, outfitted with wires during the final rigging process with heated sprue material – thankfully the D.VII does not require too many strings, just some wires between the landing gear struts and on the tail.
Painting and markings:
The funnier part, with many, really bright colors united in a tiny space – almost like an anime movie prop! I stuck to the original Albatros benchmark and applied scheme, colors and markings truthfully to the D.VII. Paints/tones became, as a guesstimate, Humbrol 155 (Olive Drab), 7 (Light Buff), 47 (Sea Blue) and a mix of 200 (Pink) with a little 68 (Purple), maybe at a 5:1 ratio, for a deeper tone. The contrast between the colors is pretty strong and aircraft looks very individual!
The wing struts were painted in black, the interior in a light olive drab tone. The engine was painted with Revell 99 (Aluminum) and treated with grinded graphite for a more metallic look, and the propeller was painted with a streaky wet-in-wet mix of Humbrol 71 and 113.
The roundels come from a Hobby Boss F4F, and since they have a rather odd style with a kind of dark blue border, they suit the model pretty well, because these roundels were introduced around 1920, so that deviations from the later, “classic” look appear plausible. The tactical code comes from an RAF Gloster Gladiator and the BuNo on the fin were created from a post-war Spitfire code.
A light black ink washing was applied, and some light post-shading was done, in order to emphasize edges and the boxy form of the aircraft with its fabric-covered surfaces. After the decals had been applied, I also added an overall light dry-brushing with khaki drill (Humbrol 72) and light grey (Revell 75). Finally, the model was sealed with matt acrylic varnish (Italeri), final bits were assembled and the rigging was added.
A simple build, but a very colorful one – hard to believe that there were aircraft in real life that actually looked this way! But the small D.VII now really stands out among “seriously” camouflaged biplanes in my collection, a very picturesque model. BTW, I am also surprised how effective the camouflage is, at least in the air - despite the garish colors!
