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I'm looking for information about the wing dimensions and airfoil shape for the Fokker D.VIII. I was under the impression that the D.VIII wing was a direct decendent of the Fokker D.VII's upper wing. However, the aerodrome's aircraft data indicates that the D.VII had a greater wing span, 29'3.5" vs 27'6.75". My interest in the D.VIII's wing is related to it's historical significance in the development of the field of aeroelasticity. For example, a quote from the book Aeroelasticity by Bisplinghoff, Ashley and Halfman describes one of the first documented cases of torsional divergence. Since the D.VIII saw only brief combat service at the end of the war, who were the pilots that were killed in the high-speed dives described by the authors in the quote?"As an early example of this kind arose during World War I in the development of the Fokker D-8 airplane shown in Fig. 1-3. In the initial design of this airplane, which was a high-wing cantilever monoplane, the torsional stiffness was determined by a criterion which had been applied to biplanes. The D-8 was put into production because of its superior performance, and was not in combat more than a few days before wing failures repeatedly occurred in high-speed dives. Since the best pilots and squadrons were receiving them first, it appeared possible that the flower of the German Air Corps would be wiped out. After a period in which the Army engineers and the Fokker Company each tried to place the responsibility on the other, the Army conducted static strength tests on half a dozen wings and found them sufficiently strong to support the required ultimate factor of 6. This produced a serious dilemma, and it was clearly up to Anthony Fokker to discover the cause or cease production on the D-8. Static tests were undertaken by the Fokker Company, and this time, deflections were carefully measured from tip to tip. In Fokker’s words (Ref. 1-6), the following conclusions were drawn: “I discovered that with increasing load, the angle of incidence at the wing tips increased perceptibly. It suddenly dawned on me that this increasing angle of incidence was the cause of the wing’s collapse, as logically the load resulting from the air pressure in a steep dive would increase faster at the wing tips than at the middle. The resulting torsion caused the wings to collapse under the strain of combat maneuvers.” This seems to be the first documented case where static aeroelastic effects at a fairly high speed produced a redistribution in airload such that failure resulted."
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