Dan San Abbott's info on the Fokker E.V - DVIII

[Hasse Wind]

As much as we do not want to veer from history, it's tough for us not to bend it a little... by a week. It has a lot to do with the amount of time and energy that is put into modeling and skinning. We want you to be able to see the pieces and fly them. So it's not firm, but being considered. I for one am OK with it just for this one plane. If it ends up in the sky for the last week of the war... well.. why not. By then, if you've survived it, as a German pilot, you can get you last dig in with it, for a British/French/American pilot, it would be the ultimate trophy for your collection. We've done our very best to be as accurate as humanly (and 'PCerly') possible. We can bend a little.

 

OvS

 

You can have the E.V in service for about a month in July-August, there is historical evidence of that. But unfortunately there doesn't seem to be much documentary evidence available about the E.V's combat use during that period. It is entirely possible they did fly combat missions with the E.V, but if there had been remarkable successes, there would probably be some evidence left behind somewhere. And flying the E.V is going to be a risk to a DiD pilot, because those early models had some serious problems with the wing construction. I suppose if the planes had seen heavy combat use during those four weeks we'd know about many more fatal accidents than the two which happened in mid August.

 

On the other hand, the improved model with a much stronger wing, the D.VIII, never seems to have made it farther than the Army aircraft parks, which were situated behind the front under the command of army HQs and their Luftstreitkräfte officers. If you want to have the D.VIII make an appearance on the front for the last few days of the war, I don't think even the most fanatical historical purist here is going to lose his sleep because of it. Lot of WW1 era archives were destroyed in Germany during the next war, so who knows what really happened. :yes: