1:48 Fokker D.VII

The fighter the armistice named

The Fokker D.VII entered the fighting in the spring of 1918 and within a few weeks earned the reputation of the most dangerous German fighter aircraft of the close of the war. A welded tube frame for the fuselage, a thick wing with no external bracing and a Mercedes or BMW inline engine gave it steadiness in a turn and the ability to fire while hanging on the propeller. The text of the armistice of November 1918 listed the type among the material to be handed over, and it is for that very reason that the machines scattered across the whole of Europe.

The five subjects the sheet covers

• an aircraft of OAW license production with the 15th Fighter Escadrille, the Polish-Soviet War of 1920
• an Albatros-built example with the serial 530 of 1918 at an air station near Poznan, 1921
• the Albatros-built machine 502 of 1918, the personal aircraft of Captain Stefan Bastyr, commander of the 3rd Air Group, Lviv 1920
• a second aircraft of OAW production, tactical number 22.04, again with the 15th Escadrille
• a postwar repaint with no combat markings

Bastyr's name stands at the very birth of the Polish Air Force: in November 1918 he took off over Lviv on the first action under the white and red checkerboard, and two years later he commanded the air group whose machines the sheet captures.

Application

The motifs are cut close to the edge of the print, released in lukewarm water and settled on a smoothly clear-coated surface. The package holds the print alone, not the parts or the shades to finish it with.