Have you ever pictured the ultimate World War
I dogfight? Oh, I think everyone has that exact
image in their head. Right. Like, if you close
your eyes right now, there is a very good chance
you are picturing this bright red triplane darting
through the clouds. You're picturing the legendary
Fokker Dr. I. Exactly. Flown by Manfred von Richthofen,
the Red Baron. It is arguably the absolute icon
of early aviation. It really is. But what if
that ultimate symbol of aerial dominance was
actually a deeply flawed, terribly rushed prototype,
like a machine held together by literal varnish,
shoddy materials, and just a whole lot of luck?
Well, what's fascinating here is how the perception
of this aircraft has completely overshadowed
its physical reality. We remember the myth, you
know, the striking silhouette of those three
stacked wings, the famous pilots. Yeah. But if
you look closely at the engineering reality,
you find a story of profound compromise. So welcome
to today's deep dive. Our mission today is to
look past the towering myth of the Fokker triplane,
and we are going right to the source material
today. Which is incredibly detailed. It is. We're
using the aircraft's Wikipedia page as our sole
guide to unpack the chaotic research and development,
the terrifying structural flaws, and the bizarre
operational history of this machine. We wanted
to discover why being famous in the history books
does not always translate to being fundamentally
good. We're looking at this aircraft as a case
study in wartime engineering. It provides a perfect
window into what happens when technological innovation
isn't driven by careful research, but by sheer
panic. Tear panic and extreme pressure from the
front lines. So let's set the stage and look
at the catalyst for that panic. Right. In the
spring of 1918, the doctor I and doctor simply
stands for drydecker, or triplane, was highly
visible. built by Fokker Flugzeugfurch, it became
world famous because Richtofen scored his last
17 victories in it before he was killed. But
despite all that fame, total production was actually
incredibly small. Yeah, they only ever built
320 of them, which is nothing for wartime production.
To understand why that number is so low, we have
to look at what the German Air Force, the Lustreit
Krafte, was dealing with a year prior in early
1917. The overarching issue was that German pilots
were suddenly losing control of the skies over
the Western Front. A new Allied aircraft had
appeared. Exactly. And the Sopwith wasn't even
heavily armed. It only carried a single Vickers
machine gun, but its three wing design gave it
incredible agility and a phenomenal rate of climb.
It was just flying circles around the Germans.
It was swiftly outclassing the heavier twin gun
German albatross fighters. So the German high
command needed a direct counter and they needed
it immediately. OK, let's unpack this. because
the German response to the Sopwith is essentially
the ultimate copy my homework moment in early
aviation. It really is. In April 1917, the aircraft
manufacturer Anthony Fokker visits Jast 11 on
the front lines, and he actually gets a chance
to inspect a captured Sopwith triplane. Which
was a massive stroke of luck for him. For sure.
So after looking it over, he travels back to
his factory in Schwerin, walks up to his lead
designer, Reinhold Platz, and basically just
tells him to build a triplane. Just build a triplane.
Yes. But he gives Plaz absolutely zero technical
specifications about the captured Sopwith. Nothing.
It's a staggering lack of direction for a major
military contract. Platz is left entirely to
his own devices. But, I mean, he was a brilliant
designer, and he responds by creating a prototype
designated the V .4. Right. It was a small rotary
-powered triplane featuring a steel tube fuselage.
But the most significant feature Platts incorporated
was the use of thick cantilever wings. Let's
pause on that term for a second, just to be clear.
When you say cantilever wings, you're talking
about wings that support their own weight internally.
Exactly. Because most planes back then looked
like a birdcage of external wires holding the
wings up. Precisely. Platts had previously worked
on government -mandated collaborations with Hugo
Junkers, and Junkers was pioneering internally
-braced wings. So no wires? Right. Instead of
a web of external bracing wires that cause massive
aerodynamic drag, a cantilever wing relies on
deep, strong, internal wooden spars to carry
the load. It's a much cleaner, more modern aerodynamic
design. But despite that innovation, when the
V .4 went up for its initial test flights, it
was an absolute nightmare to handle. The test
pilots reported that the control forces were
completely unacceptable. The ailerons and the
elevators were unbalanced. Without getting too
deep into the weeds, what does an unbalanced
aileron actually feel like to a pilot sitting
in the cockpit? Well, without balanced control
surfaces, the pilot doesn't have any aerodynamic
leverage. When they move the stick to bank the
aircraft, they are physically fighting the full
raw force of the wind pushing against that aileron.
That sounds exhausting. It is. In a dogfight
where you are constantly making aggressive split
-second maneuvers, an unbalanced system would
completely exhaust a pilot's physical strength
in a matter of minutes. So Fokker realizes this
exhaustion is a fatal flaw. They don't even submit
the V .4 for official military testing. They
knew it would fail. Right. They pivot straight
to a revised prototype called the V .5. And to
fix that heavy steering, they introduce horn
balance ailerons and elevators. Right. A horn
balance is basically a portion of the control
surface that extends forward of the hinge line.
Okay. When the pilot deflects the aileron, that
forward section catches the oncoming air and
actually helps push the rest of the surface into
position. It uses the air pressure to assist
the pilot's movement, making the controls feel
incredibly light and responsive. The V .5 also
introduced longer wings. But the most visible
change they made, and I love this detail, they
added inter -plane struts, those vertical wooden
posts connecting the outer edges of the three
wings together. Yes. And this is fascinating
because those camp leaver wings were technically
strong enough on their own. They didn't structurally
require those struts to hold the wings to the
fuselage. They didn't need them at all. Adding
struts meant adding weight and completely negating
the low drag advantage of the cantilever design
they worked so hard on. So why do it? They had
to add them because, without external bracing,
those long wooden wings flexed and bowed dramatically
during flight. Which would be absolutely terrifying
to watch if you're the one flying it. Exactly.
Imagine putting your aircraft into a steep dive
and watching your wings flap like a bird's. No,
thank you. It would completely shatter a pilot's
confidence in the machine. So the struts were
added almost entirely as a psychological band
-aid just to stop the visual flexing. And it
worked well enough that the military testing
body, Idflig, ordered 20 pre -production aircraft
in July 1917, though they did test one to destruction
on the ground just to be sure it wouldn't immediately
fall apart. So after fixing the controls and
adding these placebo struts, how did this thing
actually perform when it faced enemy fire? Because
the first two pre -production models, designated
as the FI, are sent straight to combat evaluation
in Belgium in late August. This is exactly where
the legend takes root. Manfred von Richthofen
takes one up on September 1st. Over the next
two days, he shoots down two enemy aircraft.
Incredible debut. He immediately writes this
glowing report back to the high command, boldly
declaring that the FI is fundamentally superior
to the Sopwith triplane. He essentially demands
that fighter squadrons be re -equipped with it
as soon as possible. I mean, you get a five -star
review from the most famous ace of the war. It
seems like a massive triumph. It does. But here's
where it gets really interesting. The combat
evaluation phase ends incredibly abruptly. Not
because they learned everything they needed to
know, but because Richhofen wasn't the only one
evaluating those two prototypes. Right. He handed
them off to other elite pilots, and within weeks,
in September 1917, the pilots of both of those
planes, Kurt Wolf and Werner Voss, who were highly
decorated squadron leaders, were shot down and
killed in them. This raises an important question
regarding military procurement. You have a brand
new aircraft, and within its first weeks of frontline
testing, it directly results in the deaths of
two of your most experienced aces. Right. Logically,
that should trigger an immediate halt and a massive
reevaluation of the entire program. But the desperation
from the high command overrode logic entirely.
The orders just keep rolling in. They were 100
in September, another 200 in November. They officially
designated the Dr. I, and mass production just
ramps up. Despite the glaring red flags. Exactly.
and their solutions to its operational hazards
were borderline comical. For instance, the landing
gear design made the plane incredibly tricky
to land. It had a severe tendency to ground loop,
basically spinning out of control as it touched
down, dragging its lower wings in the dirt. And
rather than redesigning the landing gear geometry
to actually make the aircraft stable on the runway,
the factory simply bolted wooden skids onto the
bottom of the lower wing tips. It was literal
duct tape engineering. They just added bumpers
so the wings wouldn't snap when the plane inevitably
spun out. It really underscores how badly they
needed these in the air. But we should acknowledge
that once it actually got into the air, the doctor
I did offer some incredible advantages. Listen
to this quote from Franz Heimer, a pilot who
flew with Justice Six. He said, the triplane
was my favorite fighting machine because it had
such wonderful flying qualities. I could let
myself stunt leaping and rolling and could avoid
an enemy by diving with perfect safety. That
praise highlights the one thing the Doctor Eye
did exceptionally well. Maneuverability. Exactly.
The rudder and elevator controls were highly
responsive. But the real secret to its agility,
and this is a crucial piece of the engineering
puzzle, was its engine. The Doctor Eye utilized
a rotary engine. And we should clarify the difference
there, because a rotary engine is not the same
thing as a radial engine, even though they look
really similar from the outside. Right. In a
standard radial engine, which is what most later
propeller planes use, the engine block is bolted
to the airframe and stays completely still while
the crankshaft spins the propeller. Makes sense.
But in a World War I rotary engine, the crankshaft
is bolted firmly to the airplane and the entire
engine block all the cylinders, the spark plugs,
the casing spins around it at hundreds of revolutions
per minute, taking the propeller with it. That
is a massive amount of spinning metal at the
very front of a tiny, lightweight, wooden airplane.
It creates immense gyroscopic procession. If
you've ever held a spinning bicycle wheel by
the axle and tried to tilt it, you feel that
bizarre heavy force pushing back against you
at an angle. Yeah, it fikes you. That's gyroscopic
torque. In the Dr. I, that spinning engine mass
caused marked directional instability. It desperately
wanted to pull to the right. Which sounds terrible.
While instability is terrible for a passenger
plane, for a fighter pilot, it meant the aircraft
was incredibly eager to change direction. A skilled
pilot could use that gyroscopic torque to execute
lightning fast. Flat turns to the right that
allied fighters simply couldn't follow. But relying
on that engine came with a massive penalty. While
it could out -turn anything, it was shockingly
slow. Yes, very slow. In level flight and in
a dive, it could not keep pace with contemporary
allied fighters. It had a great initial climb
rate, but once you got up to higher altitudes,
the performance just evaporated. That high altitude
drop -off was a direct result of the specific
rotary engine they were using, the Oberursel
Urschür. It was a 110 horsepower, nine -cylinder
engine, but it wasn't a German design. It was
stolen, essentially. It was a reverse engineered
clone of a captured French engine, the Le Rhone
9J. The German manufacturing processes couldn't
quite match the original tolerances, resulting
in a clone with poor compression. In the thin
air at high altitudes, it simply starved for
power. And to make matters worse, the German
supply chain doomed those engines to early deaths.
Rotary engines run incredibly hot and they fling
their lubricating oil out through the exhaust
as they spin. Very messy engines. Very. And they
required a very specific lubricant that wouldn't
break down under those extreme conditions. They
needed castor oil. But due to the Allied naval
blockade, Germany was experiencing severe chronic
shortages of castor oil. So the military was
forced to rely on ersatz lubricants. Synthetic
substitutes. Or lower quality substitutes. These
substitute oils broke down rapidly under the
heat and friction of the rotary engine, leading
to catastrophic engine seizures, especially during
the hot summer of 1918. So if you're a German
pilot, let's look at what you're dealing with.
You're flying an airplane that is slower than
your enemy. powered by a cloned engine that might
seize mid -flight because it's running on fake
oil. And the cockpit experience doesn't make
it any better. You have three giant wings obstructing
your view during takeoff and landing. The cockpit
is cramped, built with cheap materials, and then
there are the guns. The armament setup was a
major hazard. It carried two 7 .92 -millimeter
Spando machine guns mounted directly in front
of the cockpit. The gun butts protruded back
into the pilot's immediate space, mere inches
from their face. And remember, this is an airplane
that loves to spin out and crash during routine
landings. Exactly. Combined with entirely inadequate
crash padding on the cockpit coaming, a standard
ground loop could violently throw the pilot forward.
Surviving a dogfight only to suffer severe, sometimes
fatal, head trauma from your own machine guns
during landing was a very real threat. But the
landing gear in the engine weren't even the deadliest
flaws. The true horror of the Dr. I revealed
itself in late October 1917. The structural failures.
Right. Heinrich Gonterman, the leader of JASTA
-15, is performing standard aerobatics when his
triplane literally breaks apart in midair. He
crashes and dies. Just two days later, Gunther
Pastor of Jast 11 is killed when his triplane
also disintegrates. No dogfight, no extreme maneuvers,
the wings just collapsed. Exactly. Two fatal
mid -air structural failures in 48 hours forced
IDFleet to ground every single triplane on the
front lines in early November. They convened
a STIRS commission, a crash commission, to investigate
why these aircraft were tearing themselves apart.
The commission's findings were a massive embarrassment
for Anthony Fokker. They discovered incredibly
shoddy construction practices at his factory.
The wing structures weren't being properly waterproof.
Just poor craftsmanship. Yes. Moisture was seeping
into the wings, rotting the wooden structure
from the inside out. The wing ribs were literally
disintegrating. Under aerodynamic load, the rotting
wood would give way, the ailerons would tear
off, and the entire wing would catastrophically
fail. Fokker was severely reprimanded. He was
forced to immediately improve quality control,
meticulously varnishing the wing spars and ribs
to seal out moisture. They strengthened the rib
structures and the auxiliary spars. And Fokker
had to implement these modifications on all existing
triplanes entirely at his own expense before
they were allowed back in the air. Which is a
huge financial hit. So they varnished the wood,
reinforced the ribs, and the planes returned
to service by late November. But here is the
truly terrifying part of the story. The fixes
didn't work. No, they didn't. The wings kept
failing. In March 1918, Lothar von Richtofen,
the Red Baron's brother, experiences a catastrophic
failure of his upper wing leading edge during
a dogfight. He barely manages to crash land and
is severely injured. All the varnish in the world
wasn't stopping the wings from breaking. If we
connect this to the bigger picture, we find out
that poor factory workmanship was only a symptom.
The terminal disease of the Fokker triplane wasn't
uncovered until more than a decade after the
war. Long after the plane stopped flying. Exactly.
In 1929, the National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics, ENCA, the American organization
that eventually became NASA, conducted deep aerodynamic
investigations into the doctorized design. What
did the Anakie wind tunnel tests actually reveal?
because this is the ultimate vindication for
those pilots who felt the plane was unsafe. NKA
discovered a fundamental aerodynamic flaw in
how lift was distributed across the three wings.
In a standard biplane, the aerodynamic load is
shared relatively evenly, but the Dr .i had a
specific, staggered triplane configuration. Right,
the wings were stepped back from top to bottom.
Exactly. The wind tunnel testing proved that
the upper wing was operating in clean, undisturbed
air, which vastly accelerated the airflow over
the middle and lower wings. Because of this aerodynamic
interference, the upper wing was carrying a drastically
disproportionate amount of the lift. How disproportionate
are we talking? At high speeds, the upper wing
carried a lift coefficient up to 2 .55 times
higher than the lower wing. It was doing over
two and a half times the aerodynamic work. That
is immense. It is. When a pilot put the aircraft
into a steep dive and pulled up or banked hard
in a dogfight, the sheer aerodynamic force focused
on that single top wing was staggering. It just
couldn't take it. It simply wasn't built to handle
that uneven load. It didn't matter how well Fokker
varnished the wood or reinforced the ribs. Aerodynamically,
that upper wing was predisposed to tear itself
apart under combat stresses. It was fundamentally
doomed by its own design. It's incredible to
think that these pilots were going up every single
day in a machine that physics itself had marked
for destruction. And the German military eventually
realized the triplane was a dead end. Its chronic
structural problems, combined with its slow speed,
destroyed any chance of large -scale production.
Manufacturing officially ended in May 1918, capping
the total run at just 320 aircraft. which was
a vastly superior, structurally sound biplane.
The surviving triplanes were relegated to training
schools and home defense. And their fate after
the war is genuinely tragic for aviation historians.
By the time of the armistice, there were very
few left. Only three original triplanes are known
to have survived the end of the conflict. And
sadly, none of them exist today. It is a profound
irony. One of those three survivors was serial
number 15217. This was an incredibly historic
artifact. It was the very plane Manfred von Richtofen
flew to score three of his combat victories.
Wow. It was preserved and put on display at the
Zoo House Museum in Berlin. It survived the entirety
of the First World War only to be completely
destroyed by allied bombing raids during the
Second World War. That's heartbreaking. A second
original pieced together by Fokker himself in
1932 was destroyed in another bombing raid in
1943. Today, only small fragments, pieces of
fabric, a few instruments survive in museums.
Which means that every single Fokker triplane
you see flying in an air show today is a replica.
The cultural footprint of the doctori is so massive
that enthusiasts just keep building them from
scratch. Bitz Fluxligbaugh will famously build
two full -scale replicas for the 1966 movie The
Blue Max. And here's one of my favorite facts
from the sources. In 2014, Bruce Dickinson, the
lead singer of Iron Maiden, actually bought a
Dr. I replica. Though if you do see one flying
today, you'll likely notice it sounds quite different
from the historical accounts. Because of the
engine. Right. Because Authentic 1910's rotary
engines are incredibly scarce and notoriously
difficult to maintain, the vast majority of modern,
airworthy replicas are powered by later radial
engines, like the Warner Scarab. You get the
vintage look, but with an engine block that safely
stays put while the propeller spins. A bit safer
that way. Definitely. A few purists do manage
to source vintage Lorone rotaries, but they are
very rare. So what does this all mean? We started
out by picturing the ultimate, iconic dogfighter.
The legendary Red Baron commanding the skies
in his bright red machine. But the reality we
found in the sources is a vastly different story.
It's practically the opposite of the myth. It
is. The Fokker Dr. I is the ultimate historical
example of why you should never judge a machine
strictly by its paint job or its fame. It was
a terrifying, deeply compromised aircraft. It
was slow, cramped, powered by a cloned engine
running on synthetic oil, and its upper wing
was aerodynamically destined to rip itself to
shreds. Yet it's a legend. Because it achieved
that legendary status almost entirely through
the sheer unmatched skill and the immense celebrity
of the few elite pilots who managed to fly it
without dying. It was a triumph of human skill
over catastrophic engineering. And this raises
an important question, something for you to mull
over after we wrap up today. Oh, definitely.
This deep dive proves that history has a persistent
habit of remembering the bold aesthetic and the
famous user, while completely forgetting the
deeply flawed engineering hidden beneath the
surface. It makes you wonder, what other legendary
pieces of technology out there are getting a
historical free pass? I love that question. Right.
Whether it's vintage muscle cars, early classic
computers, or famous historical weapons, how
many of them are sitting on a cultural pedestal
right now solely because we've collectively forgotten
how incredibly terrible they actually were to
use? That is a fantastic thought to leave on.
Thank you so much for joining us on this deep
dive into the true story of the Fokker Triplane.
We hope it gave you a brand new perspective on
an aviation legend. Until next time.