Warbird Information Exchange

It's also a good excuse to post this video:


Engine run on a D.VII reproduction using an original 1918 Mercedes D IIIau engine. Built by the Early Birds Foundation at Lelystad Airport, The Netherlands. The replica is to airworthy standard, but I don't think it has flown yet.

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A Little VC10derness - A Tribute to the Vickers VC10 - www.VC10.net

actually there where 400 of them canada got as a war prize...guy storing them got caught stunt flying them in airshows... this wreck could have been one of these planes flying rum to pay for airshows.. would make sense...everyone was looking for a biplane noone could find.. so they took one wing off flew it to confuse revenue agents... and who else but a stunt pilot would think to take a wing off.. could be why it crashed.. to uch rum not enough wing..lol idk. details.

ill try this again.. this is a picture of my dads fokker he built... i cannot find it could be one of the ones pictured in thread...he sold it to wings of yesturyear museum in sarasota florida if i remember right in 1969...the two pictures posted is one of it with red baron car... and other is picture o it that came out in detroit news in 67... guy who built red baron car saw news paper phot and came to see engine.. model of car had a delmair mecedies fokker engine in it.. so they figured out model wasnt built to scale and he put in a pontiac 6.. after looking at machine guns i relized he probably used my dads machine guns to make the ones on car...but this photo was taken at airport in 1969 before first hot wheels red baron redline was made...this is photo i got of net from pictures of car... i found good picture of mecedies DIIIau engine and machine guns on areodome in pictures..aroedome thread tells stuff to identify plane...... http://www.theaerodrome.com/forum/showt ... hp?t=25718 anyway figured this was good place to post pictures of it...if anyone know where it is id like to see it again.. i was 5 last time i saw it.. n number 5125r..there is a fokker in canada now with number 5125/18...but it has a ranger engine.. and 5125/18 is serial number of fokker ...i cant make picture with red baron car upload so ill post museum picture link.. https://www.museumofamericanspeed.com/u ... adster.jpg http://www.carstyling.ru/en/entry/Tom_D ... ages/8021/ i do have better pictures of it machine gun registration info if my sister can find where they are...

here are the picures of fokker dad built in 69 with rd baron car at his airport...found closeup of machine guns o car...kinda look like fokker machine guns just like ones on dads plane...

The Knowlton DV11 is the most original one in existence .
It was given to Canada as part of the WW1 War prize inventory.
The aircraft is completely original having never been recovered, rebuilt etc .

There is also a highly accurate replica being built in Brampton Ontario Canada
The research that is being done to build this authentically is extensive.

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...it was a plane adrift beneath the moon moving serenely thru beams like an angel of the night .....fair as a song ........aloof from mortal dreams

https://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NNumbertxt=5125R

Shows registration in 1965 to Orville L Lippert of Riverdale, Michigan. It might have been subsequently re-registered under another serial number and manufacturer.

I built that car model in the early 1970s as a kid and remember the photos clearly!

With this thread back on the front page again, I thought it worth adding perhaps my favorite of all of the currently flying Fokker D.VII's, the 100% accurate reproduction built and aerobatically flown by Mikael Carlson (perhaps my biggest aviation idol), that is powered by an original Mercedes engine. Such an incredibly accurate reproduction, with original engine, flown at airshows doing loops and rolls, etc., to illustrate just how the aircraft can truly perform/maneuver - numerous videos on Youtube if you're not familiar. (Mikael Carlson's recently finished, 100% accurate Pfalz D.VIII, powered by an original Siemens-Halske SH III rotary engine (a type that has not run since the 1920's), is expected to be test flown this spring.)

Kermit Weeks also has an extremely authentic D.VII reproduction built by Fred Murrin, powered by an original Mercedes engine. It was completed a few years ago, but has not yet flown (I recall there was a fuel leak found last year and was to be repaired).

Those new photos should be helpful in tracking down what happened to the plane. It would be fun to know.

I have never heard that Canada got 400 Fokker D.VIIs as war prizes. The number usually quoted is 22. That would still leave room for one to have slipped through the cracks and ended up where your dad found it, because they weren't well kept track of and most were destroyed in a mass scrapping.

August

Amen. If there's any one aircraft and pilot combo I want to see, it's Mikael and his D.VII. You read so much about the manoeuvrability of the D.VII and other types from contemporary accounts and modern operators seem very, very averse to flying their machines in anything like those regimes.


TVAL in New Zealand had another Murrin-built D.VII registered recently, formerly N286WG. I'm very curious to see if it debuts at next month's Wings Over Wairarapa airshow.

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Zac in NZ
#avgeek, modelbuilder, photographer, writer. Callsign: "HANDBAG".
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"It's his plane, he spent the money to restore it, he can do with it what he wants. I will never understand what's hard to comprehend about this." - kalamazookid, 20/08/2013
"The more time you spend around warbirds the sooner you learn nothing, is simple." - JohnB, 24/02/22

TAVAS Collection in Caboolture Qld,Australia has a DVII,ex Achim I think.

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If the CO ask,s you to be Tail End Charlie...Just Shoot Him..A Piece of Cake

The guys at Rhinebeck have gotten more frisky with their Mercedes powered D.VII replica in the last few years. They don't do full inverted, but a lot of knife edge, hanging on the prop, and similar stuff that you read about. It is educational to see that plane perform.

August

In 2003 at the WWI fly-in at the NMUSAF, there was an almost completed replica, complete with a Mercedes engine.
It came in its own semi, so I'm guessing it was a well financed restoration. IIRC, it was from California.

Anyone know more?

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Remember the vets, the wonderful planes they flew and their sacrifices for a future many of them did not live to see.

I think actually Canada got 400 aircraft as war prises some of which were Fokker D VII's not 400 D VIIs

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...it was a plane adrift beneath the moon moving serenely thru beams like an angel of the night .....fair as a song ........aloof from mortal dreams

Even that sounds very high. I have read that most of the war prize airplanes received by Canada were D.VIIs, and that the others, like the Junkers J.I, were mostly one of each type. 400 German planes would have been three times the size of Canada's entire air force, which mostly consisted of the 1919 Imperial Gift aircraft. I think we would know more about them, as we do about the 142 D.VIIs used by the U.S. military after the war, if there were that many.

August

Sorry should have given a link.
http://www.tavas.com.au/fokker-dvi.php

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If the CO ask,s you to be Tail End Charlie...Just Shoot Him..A Piece of Cake