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Description
Fokker Dr.I 454/17 of Jasta 11, Jagdgeschwader 1 of the Luftstreitkräfte, Imperial German Army, Valenciennes, France, March 13th 1918.
Flown by Lothar Siegfried Freiherr von Richthofen.

The Fokker Dr.I was a direct response to the Sopwith Triplane, a British fighter aircraft which first appeared over the Western Front in February of 1917. While the Triplane was a succesful fighter plane, its career was only brief, with just 147 examples built. Especially its difficult repair and maintenance, and its relatively light armament led to it falling out of favour, and when better armed Sopwith Camel appeared in June of 1917, the Triplane quickly found itself replaced.

However, one Triplane fell into German hands in April of 1917, and was shown to Anthony Fokker, who was asked to built a plane as manoeuverable and agile as the Triplane. Once back at his factory, Anthony Fokker gave his designer Reinhold Platz a design brief for a triplane fighter.

The first prototype of the Fokker Dr.I, the 'V.4', first flew on July 5th 1917, then as a cantilevered triplane without outer interplane struts. However, it proved heavy to fly due to its unbalanced control surfaces, so a redesign took place, resulting in the V.5 prototype. On July 14th, an order for 20 pre-production aircraft was made, of which the first, Fokker F.I 101/17, was delivered to Idflieg at Berlin-Adlershof airfield in August of 1917, for destructive tests. The first two operational aircraft, Fokker F.I 102/17 and 103/17, were delivered to Jagdgeschwader 1 at Markebeke in Belgium on August 28th 1917 for operational trials.

It is here that the type's most famous pilot, Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen, first flew the triplane, using prototype 102/17 on September 1st 1917 for a combat patrol during which he scored his 60th kill (RAF R.E.8 B732 of 6 Squadron RFC which crashed near Zonnebeke, with its pilot Lt. John Bristo Culley Madge injured and made prisoner, and its observer 2/Lt. Walter Kember killed in action). Two days later, von Richthofen used the aircraft again, scoring his 61st kill (Sopwith Pup B1795 of 46 Squadron RFC which crashed near Bousbecque, with its pilot Lt. Algernon Frederick Bird taken prisoner). Von Richthofen was enthousiastic about the new aircraft, requesting it to be put into production immediately, but the service trials of the two prototypes was only short-lived: on September 15th, 102/17 was lost when Oberleutnant Kurt Wolff (1895-1917) was shot down by the Sopwith Camel of Flight Sub-Lieutenant Norman MacGregor from 10 Squadron RFC; 103/17 in turn was lost on September 23rd when it was shot down in an unevenly matched dogfight - in a ten-minute dogfight, Lieutenant Werner Voss (1897-1917) single-handedly fought 8 RAF S.E.5a's of 56 Squadron RFC before being killed by a bullet that pierced his chest - but not before having hit every single one of his opponents!

Despite these losses, the first production Dr.Is were delivered to Jasta 11 of Jagdgeschwader 1 in October of 1917. Compared to the Albatros and Pfalz biplane fighters then in use, the Dr.I was exceptionally manoeuvrable, however it did not come without its flaws. The forward sight of the Dr.I was poor, partly because of the middle wing which blocked much of the viewing field of the pilot during take-off and landing; the cockpit was cramped; and the placement of the machine gun butts left the pilot vulnerable to head injury in the event of a crash or emergency landing.

More worryingly, though, was a series of structural failures of the upper wing, which started with an accident on October 29th 1917 that claimed the life of Leutnant der Reserve Heinrich Gontermann, the Staffelführer of Jasta 15. When on October 31st the Triplane of Leutnant der Reserve Günther Pastor of Jasta 11 suffered a similar wing failure, resulting in his death, the Idflieg ordered the Fokker Dr.I grounded and started an inquiry. It was soon found that poor construction and lack of waterproofing led to moisture seeping into the wing and damaging the internal structure, which subsequently failed. Fokker replied by both strengthening the wing structure and improving quality control on the production line, after which the Dr.I's grounding was lifted on November 28th 1917.

However, even after the Fokker Dr.I was strengthened, wing failures continued to occur - post-War, it was found that a poor understanding of aerodynamics left the Dr.I with an upper wing that delivered up to two and a half times the lift of the lower wings: at higher speeds, the upper wing of the triplane litterally started ripping itself from the plane. However, as this issue was not understood at the time, the Idflieg simply decided to decline any further orders of the Dr.I after the first three orders of 20 pre-production aircraft, the initial production order of 100 and the follow-up order of 200 aircraft was fulfilled - as such, only 320 Fokker Dr.Is were delivered to the Luftstreitkräfte.

The Dr.I soon became obsolete, unable to fight on even terms with the Sopwith Camel and RAF S.E.5a. Even before the summer of 1918, the type started being replaced by the superior Fokker D.VII; it was no longer in front-line service by the time the War ended in November 1918. Only 2 examples appear to have survived the mass-scrappings in the immediate post-War years: 528/17 was used as a mail plane by Deutsche Luft-Reederei before being preserved, but was subsequently destroyed in a crash in 1938; and 152/17, an aircraft flown by Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen, was displayed in the Zughaus museum in Berlin, only to be destroyed during an Allied bombing raid in 1943.

--------------------

Lothar Siegfried Freiherr von Richthofen was born on September 27th 1894 in Kleinburg, Germany (present-day Wrocław, Poland), as the younger brother of Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen (1892-1918). After attending public Gymnasium, he was enrolled in compulsary military training at the Kriegsschule in Danzig, and began the First World War as a cavalry officer with the 4th dRagoon Regiment. In mid-October 1914 Lothar was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class for valour, which was the high point of his cavalry career. In 1915, on the insistence of his bigger brother Manfred, Lothar transferred to the Fliegertruppe. He joined the Luftstreitkräfte in late-1915, originally serving as an aerial observer. As such, he won the Iron Cross 1st Class in December of 1916, after which he started training as a pilot.

Lothar von Richthofen was posted to Manfred's Jasta 11 on March 5th 1917, where he immediately showed himself to be an agressive pilot. He scored his first victory on March 28th 1917. The next month, during the Battle of Arras, Lothar was particularly succesful - by the end of the month he had scored no less than 15 victories, this of a total of 245 Allied aircraft shot down by the German Luftstreitkräfte during that month. May 1917 saw his total of victories climb to 24, only for his career as a fighter pilot to be interrupted when he was injured in combat on May 13th, being hit by anti-aircraft fire and crashing his aircraft on landing. His injuries left him unable to fly for five months; he only returned to his command in September. However, in early January 1918 he suffered a severe ear infection which left him hospitalised until mid-February. On returning to his unit, Lothar shot down 3 Bristol F2B Fighters on March 11th and 12th, only to suffer a structural failure of the upper wing of his Dr.I 454/17 while in a dogfight with Sopwith Camels on March 13th; he managed to nurse his crippled aircraft to his base only for it to crash on landing, once again leaving him hospitalised. While recovering from his injuries, he learned the news of the death of his brother Manfred on April 21st 1918.

Returning to service in late July of 1918, Lothar's unit had re-equiped with the superior Fokker D.VII fighter: in a span of less than three weeks, he would use it to score 11 more victories, until he was once again injured, being hit in the thigh during aerial combat. His injury left him unsuited for combat duties, and Lothar would not see any further combat for the remainder of the War. He ended his war with 40 victories, exactly half the number his brother scored. However, given the amount of times he was hospitalised, the short span in which he scored his victories and the aggressive way in which he fought, it is clear and certain that his tally could have matched if not surpassed Manfred's if not for the numerous interruptions to his combat career.

Following the Armastice, Lothar briefly worked on a farm before accepting an industrial position. He married Countess Doris von Keyserlingk in June of 1919, with which he would have two children (Carmen Viola, 1920–1971, and Wolf-Manfred, 1922–2010); however their marriage broke up in 1922, and Lothar subsequently started flying again, this time as a commercial pilot for the Deutsche Luft-Reederei, flying mail and passengers on the Berlin-Hamburg aerial route.

Sadly, like his elder brother, Lothar Freiherr von Richthofen was to die piloting an airplane. Flying a war-surplus LVG C.VI, registered D.148 on the German civilian register, Lothar was killed on July 4th 1922 when his aircraft suffered an engine failure during take-off at Hamburg's Fuhlsbottel airport. At the time he was carrying two passengers: the actress Fern Andra (1893-1974) who survived but was hospitalised for a year due to the severity of her injuries; and the director Georg Bluen (1878-1941), who suffered life-threatening injuries but eventually recovered.

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Detail shot of the undersides. Few people realise how dirty these aircraft could become!

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1/72 Revell 04116
Inventory number 490 - purchased December 4th 2005
Third model completed in 2018
594 aircraft still on 'to do' list.

Description
Fokker Dr.I 454/17 of Jasta 11, Jagdgeschwader 1 of the Luftstreitkräfte, Imperial German Army, Valenciennes, France, March 13th 1918.
Flown by Lothar Siegfried Freiherr von Richthofen.

The Fokker Dr.I was a direct response to the Sopwith Triplane, a British fighter aircraft which first appeared over the Western Front in February of 1917. While the Triplane was a succesful fighter plane, its career was only brief, with just 147 examples built. Especially its difficult repair and maintenance, and its relatively light armament led to it falling out of favour, and when better armed Sopwith Camel appeared in June of 1917, the Triplane quickly found itself replaced.

However, one Triplane fell into German hands in April of 1917, and was shown to Anthony Fokker, who was asked to built a plane as manoeuverable and agile as the Triplane. Once back at his factory, Anthony Fokker gave his designer Reinhold Platz a design brief for a triplane fighter.

The first prototype of the Fokker Dr.I, the 'V.4', first flew on July 5th 1917, then as a cantilevered triplane without outer interplane struts. However, it proved heavy to fly due to its unbalanced control surfaces, so a redesign took place, resulting in the V.5 prototype. On July 14th, an order for 20 pre-production aircraft was made, of which the first, Fokker F.I 101/17, was delivered to Idflieg at Berlin-Adlershof airfield in August of 1917, for destructive tests. The first two operational aircraft, Fokker F.I 102/17 and 103/17, were delivered to Jagdgeschwader 1 at Markebeke in Belgium on August 28th 1917 for operational trials.

It is here that the type's most famous pilot, Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen, first flew the triplane, using prototype 102/17 on September 1st 1917 for a combat patrol during which he scored his 60th kill (RAF R.E.8 B732 of 6 Squadron RFC which crashed near Zonnebeke, with its pilot Lt. John Bristo Culley Madge injured and made prisoner, and its observer 2/Lt. Walter Kember killed in action). Two days later, von Richthofen used the aircraft again, scoring his 61st kill (Sopwith Pup B1795 of 46 Squadron RFC which crashed near Bousbecque, with its pilot Lt. Algernon Frederick Bird taken prisoner). Von Richthofen was enthousiastic about the new aircraft, requesting it to be put into production immediately, but the service trials of the two prototypes was only short-lived: on September 15th, 102/17 was lost when Oberleutnant Kurt Wolff (1895-1917) was shot down by the Sopwith Camel of Flight Sub-Lieutenant Norman MacGregor from 10 Squadron RFC; 103/17 in turn was lost on September 23rd when it was shot down in an unevenly matched dogfight - in a ten-minute dogfight, Lieutenant Werner Voss (1897-1917) single-handedly fought 8 RAF S.E.5a's of 56 Squadron RFC before being killed by a bullet that pierced his chest - but not before having hit every single one of his opponents!

Despite these losses, the first production Dr.Is were delivered to Jasta 11 of Jagdgeschwader 1 in October of 1917. Compared to the Albatros and Pfalz biplane fighters then in use, the Dr.I was exceptionally manoeuvrable, however it did not come without its flaws. The forward sight of the Dr.I was poor, partly because of the middle wing which blocked much of the viewing field of the pilot during take-off and landing; the cockpit was cramped; and the placement of the machine gun butts left the pilot vulnerable to head injury in the event of a crash or emergency landing.

More worryingly, though, was a series of structural failures of the upper wing, which started with an accident on October 29th 1917 that claimed the life of Leutnant der Reserve Heinrich Gontermann, the Staffelführer of Jasta 15. When on October 31st the Triplane of Leutnant der Reserve Günther Pastor of Jasta 11 suffered a similar wing failure, resulting in his death, the Idflieg ordered the Fokker Dr.I grounded and started an inquiry. It was soon found that poor construction and lack of waterproofing led to moisture seeping into the wing and damaging the internal structure, which subsequently failed. Fokker replied by both strengthening the wing structure and improving quality control on the production line, after which the Dr.I's grounding was lifted on November 28th 1917.

However, even after the Fokker Dr.I was strengthened, wing failures continued to occur - post-War, it was found that a poor understanding of aerodynamics left the Dr.I with an upper wing that delivered up to two and a half times the lift of the lower wings: at higher speeds, the upper wing of the triplane litterally started ripping itself from the plane. However, as this issue was not understood at the time, the Idflieg simply decided to decline any further orders of the Dr.I after the first three orders of 20 pre-production aircraft, the initial production order of 100 and the follow-up order of 200 aircraft was fulfilled - as such, only 320 Fokker Dr.Is were delivered to the Luftstreitkräfte.

The Dr.I soon became obsolete, unable to fight on even terms with the Sopwith Camel and RAF S.E.5a. Even before the summer of 1918, the type started being replaced by the superior Fokker D.VII; it was no longer in front-line service by the time the War ended in November 1918. Only 2 examples appear to have survived the mass-scrappings in the immediate post-War years: 528/17 was used as a mail plane by Deutsche Luft-Reederei before being preserved, but was subsequently destroyed in a crash in 1938; and 152/17, an aircraft flown by Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen, was displayed in the Zughaus museum in Berlin, only to be destroyed during an Allied bombing raid in 1943.

--------------------

Lothar Siegfried Freiherr von Richthofen was born on September 27th 1894 in Kleinburg, Germany (present-day Wrocław, Poland), as the younger brother of Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen (1892-1918). After attending public Gymnasium, he was enrolled in compulsary military training at the Kriegsschule in Danzig, and began the First World War as a cavalry officer with the 4th dRagoon Regiment. In mid-October 1914 Lothar was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class for valour, which was the high point of his cavalry career. In 1915, on the insistence of his bigger brother Manfred, Lothar transferred to the Fliegertruppe. He joined the Luftstreitkräfte in late-1915, originally serving as an aerial observer. As such, he won the Iron Cross 1st Class in December of 1916, after which he started training as a pilot.

Lothar von Richthofen was posted to Manfred's Jasta 11 on March 5th 1917, where he immediately showed himself to be an agressive pilot. He scored his first victory on March 28th 1917. The next month, during the Battle of Arras, Lothar was particularly succesful - by the end of the month he had scored no less than 15 victories, this of a total of 245 Allied aircraft shot down by the German Luftstreitkräfte during that month. May 1917 saw his total of victories climb to 24, only for his career as a fighter pilot to be interrupted when he was injured in combat on May 13th, being hit by anti-aircraft fire and crashing his aircraft on landing. His injuries left him unable to fly for five months; he only returned to his command in September. However, in early January 1918 he suffered a severe ear infection which left him hospitalised until mid-February. On returning to his unit, Lothar shot down 3 Bristol F2B Fighters on March 11th and 12th, only to suffer a structural failure of the upper wing of his Dr.I 454/17 while in a dogfight with Sopwith Camels on March 13th; he managed to nurse his crippled aircraft to his base only for it to crash on landing, once again leaving him hospitalised. While recovering from his injuries, he learned the news of the death of his brother Manfred on April 21st 1918.

Returning to service in late July of 1918, Lothar's unit had re-equiped with the superior Fokker D.VII fighter: in a span of less than three weeks, he would use it to score 11 more victories, until he was once again injured, being hit in the thigh during aerial combat. His injury left him unsuited for combat duties, and Lothar would not see any further combat for the remainder of the War. He ended his war with 40 victories, exactly half the number his brother scored. However, given the amount of times he was hospitalised, the short span in which he scored his victories and the aggressive way in which he fought, it is clear and certain that his tally could have matched if not surpassed Manfred's if not for the numerous interruptions to his combat career.

Following the Armastice, Lothar briefly worked on a farm before accepting an industrial position. He married Countess Doris von Keyserlingk in June of 1919, with which he would have two children (Carmen Viola, 1920–1971, and Wolf-Manfred, 1922–2010); however their marriage broke up in 1922, and Lothar subsequently started flying again, this time as a commercial pilot for the Deutsche Luft-Reederei, flying mail and passengers on the Berlin-Hamburg aerial route.

Sadly, like his elder brother, Lothar Freiherr von Richthofen was to die piloting an airplane. Flying a war-surplus LVG C.VI, registered D.148 on the German civilian register, Lothar was killed on July 4th 1922 when his aircraft suffered an engine failure during take-off at Hamburg's Fuhlsbottel airport. At the time he was carrying two passengers: the actress Fern Andra (1893-1974) who survived but was hospitalised for a year due to the severity of her injuries; and the director Georg Bluen (1878-1941), who suffered life-threatening injuries but eventually recovered.

----------

Detail shot of the undersides. Few people realise how dirty these aircraft could become!

----------

1/72 Revell 04116
Inventory number 490 - purchased December 4th 2005
Third model completed in 2018
594 aircraft still on 'to do' list.