Fokker Eindecker

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Fokker Eindecker

The Fokker Eindecker was a German First World War
World War I

World War I, or the First World War , was a global military conflict which involved the Great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War I and the Central Powers....
monoplane
Monoplane

A monoplane is an aircraft with one main set of wing surfaces, in contrast to a biplane or triplane. Since the late 1930s it has been the "ordinary" form for a fixed wing aircraft....
single-seat fighter aircraft
Fighter aircraft

A fighter aircraft is a military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat with other aircraft, as opposed to a bomber, which is designed primarily to attack ground targets by dropping bombs....
designed by Dutch
Netherlands

The Netherlands is a country that is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands is located in North-West Europe, and bordered by the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east....
engineer Anthony Fokker
Anthony Fokker

Anton Herman Gerard Fokker was a pioneer in aviation and a Netherlands-United States aircraft manufacturer....
. Developed in April 1915, the Eindecker ("Monoplane") was the first purpose-built German fighter aircraft and the first aircraft to be fitted with synchronizer gear, enabling the pilot to fire a machine gun
Machine gun

A machine gun is a Automatic firearm mounted or portable firearm, usually designed to fire List of rifle cartridgess in quick succession from an Belt or large-capacity Magazine , typically at a rate of several hundred rounds per minute....
through the arc of the propeller
Propeller

A propeller is a type of fan which transmits power by converting rotational motion into thrust. It can be used to drive an fixed-wing aircraft, ship, or the fluid within a pump....
without striking the blades. The Eindecker granted the German Air Service, known as the Luftstreitkräfte

Luftstreitkräfte

The Deutsche Luftstreitkr?fte, known before 1916 as Die Fliegertruppen des deutschen Kaiserreiches , was the over-land air arm of the Germany military during World War I ....
, a degree of air superiority from July 1915 until early 1916; a period known as the "Fokker Scourge
Fokker Scourge

The Fokker Scourge was a term coined by the United Kingdom press in the summer of 1915 to describe the then-current ascendency of the Fokker Eindecker monoplane fighters of the Imperial Germany Luftstreitkr?fte over the poorly armed allied reconnaissance types of the period....
" during which Allied aviators regarded their poorly armed aircraft as "Fokker Fodder
Fokker Fodder

Fokker Fodder was a derogatory term coined by the British Press in early 1916 for the aircraft of the Royal Flying Corps in France, at a time when Allied aircraft types - especially the British Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2 - were badly outclassed by the Fokker Eindecker, one of the very first true fighter aircraft....
".

Eindecker was based on Fokker's unarmed A.III scout
Scout (aircraft)

The term scout, as a description of a class of military aircraft, came into use shortly before the Word War I, and referred to a light reconnaissance aircraft, initially unarmed....
(itself following very closely the design of the French Morane-Saulnier H
Morane-Saulnier H

The Morane-Saulnier H was a sport aircraft produced in France in the years before the First World War, a single-seat derivative of the successful Morane-Saulnier G with a slightly reduced wingspan Like the Type G, it was a successful sporting type in its day....
shoulder-wing monoplane) which was fitted with a synchronizer mechanism controlling a single Parabellum MG14
Parabellum MG14

The Parabellum MG14 was a 7.92x57 mm Mauser World War I machine gun built by Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken. It was an adaptation of their Maschinengewehr 08 gun intended for use on aircraft and zeppelins....
machine gun.

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Encyclopedia

The Fokker Eindecker was a German First World War
World War I

World War I, or the First World War , was a global military conflict which involved the Great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War I and the Central Powers....
monoplane
Monoplane

A monoplane is an aircraft with one main set of wing surfaces, in contrast to a biplane or triplane. Since the late 1930s it has been the "ordinary" form for a fixed wing aircraft....
single-seat fighter aircraft
Fighter aircraft

A fighter aircraft is a military aircraft designed primarily for air-to-air combat with other aircraft, as opposed to a bomber, which is designed primarily to attack ground targets by dropping bombs....
designed by Dutch
Netherlands

The Netherlands is a country that is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands is located in North-West Europe, and bordered by the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east....
engineer Anthony Fokker
Anthony Fokker

Anton Herman Gerard Fokker was a pioneer in aviation and a Netherlands-United States aircraft manufacturer....
. Developed in April 1915, the Eindecker ("Monoplane") was the first purpose-built German fighter aircraft and the first aircraft to be fitted with synchronizer gear, enabling the pilot to fire a machine gun
Machine gun

A machine gun is a Automatic firearm mounted or portable firearm, usually designed to fire List of rifle cartridgess in quick succession from an Belt or large-capacity Magazine , typically at a rate of several hundred rounds per minute....
through the arc of the propeller
Propeller

A propeller is a type of fan which transmits power by converting rotational motion into thrust. It can be used to drive an fixed-wing aircraft, ship, or the fluid within a pump....
without striking the blades. The Eindecker granted the German Air Service, known as the Luftstreitkräfte
Luftstreitkräfte

The Deutsche Luftstreitkr?fte, known before 1916 as Die Fliegertruppen des deutschen Kaiserreiches , was the over-land air arm of the Germany military during World War I ....
, a degree of air superiority from July 1915 until early 1916; a period known as the "Fokker Scourge
Fokker Scourge

The Fokker Scourge was a term coined by the United Kingdom press in the summer of 1915 to describe the then-current ascendency of the Fokker Eindecker monoplane fighters of the Imperial Germany Luftstreitkr?fte over the poorly armed allied reconnaissance types of the period....
" during which Allied aviators regarded their poorly armed aircraft as "Fokker Fodder
Fokker Fodder

Fokker Fodder was a derogatory term coined by the British Press in early 1916 for the aircraft of the Royal Flying Corps in France, at a time when Allied aircraft types - especially the British Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2 - were badly outclassed by the Fokker Eindecker, one of the very first true fighter aircraft....
".

Design and development
The Eindecker was based on Fokker's unarmed A.III scout
Scout (aircraft)

The term scout, as a description of a class of military aircraft, came into use shortly before the Word War I, and referred to a light reconnaissance aircraft, initially unarmed....
(itself following very closely the design of the French Morane-Saulnier H
Morane-Saulnier H

The Morane-Saulnier H was a sport aircraft produced in France in the years before the First World War, a single-seat derivative of the successful Morane-Saulnier G with a slightly reduced wingspan Like the Type G, it was a successful sporting type in its day....
shoulder-wing monoplane) which was fitted with a synchronizer mechanism controlling a single Parabellum MG14
Parabellum MG14

The Parabellum MG14 was a 7.92x57 mm Mauser World War I machine gun built by Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken. It was an adaptation of their Maschinengewehr 08 gun intended for use on aircraft and zeppelins....
machine gun. Anthony Fokker personally demonstrated the system, having towed the prototype aircraft behind his touring car to a military airfield near Berlin.

All Eindeckers used a gravity fuel tank which had to be constantly filled by hand-pumping from the main fuel tank behind the pilot; this task had to be performed up to eight times an hour. Both the rudder
Rudder

A rudder is a device used to steer a ship, boat, submarine, hovercraft, or other conveyance that moves through a fluid . On an aircraft the rudder is used primarily to counter adverse yaw and p-factor and is not the primary control used to turn the airplane....
and elevator
Elevator (aircraft)

Elevators are control surfaces, usually at the rear of an aircraft, which control the aircraft's orientation by changing the Flight dynamics of the aircraft, and so also the angle of attack of the wing....
were balanced, and the type had no fixed tail surfaces. This combination rendered the Eindecker very responsive to pitch and yaw
Yaw angle

The yaw angle is the angle between a vehicle's heading and a reference heading . One of the Tait-Bryan angles. In aeronautics, robotics and marine control, it is typically assigned the shorthand notation ....
. For an inexperienced pilot, the extreme sensitivity of the elevators made level flight difficult; German ace
Flying ace

A flying ace or fighter ace is a military aviation credited with shooting down several enemy aircraft during aerial combat. The actual number of air victories required to officially qualify as an "ace" has varied, but is usually considered to be five or more....
Leutnant Kurt Wintgens
Kurt Wintgens

Kurt Wintgens was a Germany World War I Flying Ace and receipient of the Iron Cross and Pour le M?rite....
stated "lightning is a straight line compared with the barogram of the first solo". Roll response on the other hand, was poor. This is often blamed on the use of wing-warping rather than aileron
Aileron

For the band with a similar name, see The AileronsAilerons are hinged control surfaces attached to the trailing edge of the wing of a fixed-wing aircraft....
s - although monoplanes of the time, even when fitted with ailerons, often had unpredictable or unresponsive roll control due to the flexibility of their wings.

The main difference between the E.I and E.II was the engine, the former having the 7-cylinder 80 hp Oberursel U.0
Motorenfabrik Oberursel

Motorenfabrik Oberursel A.G. was a Germany manufacturer of automobile, locomotive and aircraft engines situated in Oberursel , near Frankfurt , Germany....
rotary engine
Rotary engine

The 'rotary engine' was an early type of internal-combustion engine in which the crankshaft remained stationary and the entire cylinder block rotated around it....
which was essentially a direct copy of the French-made Gnôme
Gnome

A gnome is a mythical creature characterized by its extremely small size and wiktionary:subterranean lifestyle. The word gnome is derived from the New Latin gnomus....
Lambda 80 hp seven cylinder rotary engine, while the latter had the 9-cylinder Oberursel U I 100 hp version, a direct copy of the French Gnôme 100 hp "Monosoupape
Gnome Monosoupape

The Monosoupape , was an engine design used by Gnome et Rh?ne's later rotary engines, and first introduced in 1913. It used a clever arrangement of internal transfer ports and a single valve to replace a large number of moving parts found on more conventional rotary engines, and made the Monosoupape engines some of the most reliable of the e...
" rotary engine. Production of the types therefore depended on engine availability and the two variants were built in parallel. Many E.IIs were either completed as E.IIIs or upgraded to E.III standard when returned for repair.

The definitive version of the Eindecker was the Fokker E.III
Fokker E.III

The Fokker E.III was the main variant of the Netherlands Fokker Eindecker fighter aircraft of the First World War. It entered service on the Western Front in December 1915 in aviation and was also supplied to the Austria-Hungary and Turkey....
. Boelcke's Feldflieger Abteilung
Feldflieger Abteilung

Feldflieger Abteilung or Field Flying Companies were field aviation units of the Luftstreitkr?fte in World War I. At the start of the conflict, there were thirty-three units, comprising one allocated to each of the eight German Army and one to each of the twenty-five regular Corps Headquarters....
62 began operating the E.III towards the end of 1915. Some E.IIIs were armed with twin Spandau MG 08
Maschinengewehr 08

The Maschinengewehr 08, or MG08, was the German Army's standard machine gun in World War I and is an almost direct copy of Hiram Stevens Maxim's original 1884 Maxim Gun....
machine guns. The final variant was the Fokker E.IV
Fokker E.IV

The Fokker E.IV was the final variant of the Fokker Eindecker fighter aircraft that was operated by Germany during the First World War....
which received a 160 hp Oberursel U.III, 14 cylinder twin-row rotary engine (a copy of the Gnôme Double Lambda rotary) and was fitted with twin machine guns as standard. Total production was 416 aircraft (one aircraft's type is unknown).

Operational history
The first Eindecker victory, though unconfirmed, was achieved by Leutnant Wintgens on 1 July 1915 when, while flying one of the five M.5K/MG production prototype aircraft, numbered 'E.5/15', he forced down a French Morane-Saulnier L two seat "parasol" monoplane. By this time the first E.Is were arriving as supplementary equipment for the ordinary Feldflieger Abteilung - initially to provide escort protection for their reconnaissance machines.

The two most famous Eindecker pilots were Oswald Boelcke
Oswald Boelcke

Oswald Boelcke was a Germany flying ace of the First World War and one of the most influential patrol leaders and military tactics of the early years of air combat....
and Max Immelmann
Max Immelmann

Max Immelmann was a Germany World War I flying ace....
, both of Feldflieger Abteilung 62, who scored their first kills in E.Is in August 1915. Leutnant Otto Parschau
Otto Parschau

Otto Parschau was a Germany World War I Flying Ace and recipient of the Pour le M?rite and Iron Cross, First Class....
, who was instrumental in the introduction of the Eindecker from the very start, flew the M.5K/MG aircraft numbered E.1/15.

Boelcke scored the most Eindecker victories; 19 out of his final tally of 40, his last coming on 27 June 1916. Immelmann had the second-highest Eindecker score, having achieved all his 15 victories in the type before being killed when his E.III broke up in June 1916. Eleven pilots scored five or more victories in the Eindecker. Boelcke, Immelmann and Wintgens all received Germany's highest military decoration, the Pour le Mérite
Pour le Mérite

The Pour le M?rite, known informally during World War I as the Blue Max , was the Kingdom of Prussia's highest military Order until the end of World War I....
or "Blue Max", while flying the Eindecker.

The arrival in early 1916 of the Airco DH.2
Airco DH.2

The Airco DH.2 was a single-seat biplane "Pusher configuration" aircraft which operated as a Fighter aircraft during the World War I. It was the second pusher design by Geoffrey de Havilland for Airco, based on his earlier Airco DH.1 two-seater....
and Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.2
Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.2

The Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.2 was a two-seat pusher configuration biplane that was operated as a day and night bomber and as a fighter aircraft by the Royal Flying Corps during the World War I....
pusher aircraft, along with the [[Nieuport 11]], brought the dominance of the Eindecker to an end and, with it, the "Fokker Scourge".

Surviving examples
Only one original Eindecker remains. On 8 April 1916, a novice German pilot took off from Valenciennes
Valenciennes

Valenciennes is a Communes of France in the Nord Departments of France in northern France.It lies on the Scheldt river. Although the city and region had seen a steady decline between 1975 and 1990, it has since rebounded....
with a new E.III (serial number 210/16) bound for Wasquehal
Wasquehal

Wasquehal is a Communes of France in the Nord Departments of France in northern France.The town originally had a Flemish name; it was written as Waskenhal in the 11th century....
but became lost in haze and landed at a British aerodrome east of St. Omer. He was forced to surrender before he realised his error and could destroy the aircraft. The E.III was test-flown against the Morane-Saulnier N and other Allied types at St. Omer before going to Upavon
Upavon

Upavon is a rural village in the England Counties of the United Kingdom of Wiltshire, England. As its name suggests, it is on the upper portions of the River Avon, Hampshire which runs from the north to the south through the village....
in Wiltshire
Wiltshire

Wiltshire is a Ceremonial counties of England in the South West England of England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire....
for evaluation and finally going on museum display. It now resides at the Science Museum
Science Museum (London)

The Science Museum on Exhibition Road, South Kensington, London is part of the National Museum of Science and Industry. The museum is a major London tourist attraction....
in London. Immelmann's original E.I also survived the war and went on display in Dresden
Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Germany Federal Free state of Saxony. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon triangle metropolitan area....
where it was destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II
World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
.

Variants
The Eindecker went through five variants:

Fokker M.5K/MG (A.III)
Fokker M.5

The Fokker M.5 was an unarmed single-seat monoplane aircraft designed and built by Anthony Fokker in 1913. It served as a light reconnaissance aircraft with the Germany army at the outbreak of the First World War and was the basis for the first successful fighter aircraft in German service, the Fokker E.I....
- 5 built
Fokker E.I
Fokker E.I

The Fokker E.I was the first successful fighter aircraft to enter service with the German Army Air Service - in mid-1915. Its arrival at the front marked the start of a period known as the "Fokker Scourge" during which the E.I and its Fokker Eindecker successors achieved a measure of air superiority over the Western Front ....
- 68 built
Fokker E.II
Fokker E.II

The Fokker E.II was the second variant of the Germany Fokker Eindecker single-seat monoplane fighter aircraft of the First World War. The E.II was essentially a Fokker E.I with the 100-hp Motorenfabrik Oberursel U.I 9-cylinder rotary engine, a close copy of the French Gn?me Monosoupape engine rotary of the same power output, in place of the...
- 49 built
Fokker E.III
Fokker E.III

The Fokker E.III was the main variant of the Netherlands Fokker Eindecker fighter aircraft of the First World War. It entered service on the Western Front in December 1915 in aviation and was also supplied to the Austria-Hungary and Turkey....
- 249 built
Fokker E.IV
Fokker E.IV

The Fokker E.IV was the final variant of the Fokker Eindecker fighter aircraft that was operated by Germany during the First World War....
- 49 built

Specifications (Fokker E.III)

See also

Fokker Fodder
Fokker Fodder

Fokker Fodder was a derogatory term coined by the British Press in early 1916 for the aircraft of the Royal Flying Corps in France, at a time when Allied aircraft types - especially the British Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2 - were badly outclassed by the Fokker Eindecker, one of the very first true fighter aircraft....
Fokker Scourge
Fokker Scourge

The Fokker Scourge was a term coined by the United Kingdom press in the summer of 1915 to describe the then-current ascendency of the Fokker Eindecker monoplane fighters of the Imperial Germany Luftstreitkr?fte over the poorly armed allied reconnaissance types of the period....
Interrupter gear
Interrupter gear

Interrupter gear is a term that covers two related technologies.The first is the synchronization gear, which is often incorrectly referred to as "interrupter gear"; this is a triggering device attached to the machine gun armament of a tractor -type fighter aircraft so that it would fire only at certain times....
Max Immelmann
Max Immelmann

Max Immelmann was a Germany World War I flying ace....
Oswald Boelcke
Oswald Boelcke

Oswald Boelcke was a Germany flying ace of the First World War and one of the most influential patrol leaders and military tactics of the early years of air combat....

Bibliography

Boyne, Walter J. The Smithsonian Book of Flight for Young People. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute, 1988. ISBN 0-689-31422-1.
Grosz, Peter M. Fokker E I/II (Windsock Datafile No. 91). Berkhamsted, Herts, UK: Albatros Publications, 2002. ISBN 1-90220-746-7.
Grosz, Peter M. Fokker E III (Windsock Datafile No. 15). Berkhamsted, Herts, UK: Albatros Publications, 1989. ISBN 0-94841-419-7.
Jarrett, Phillip. "Database: The Fokker Eindeckers". Aeroplane Monthly, December 2004.

External links

NSW Migration Heritage Centre - Statement of Significance