DVII Performance

Can someone relay the speed and climbing performance specs for the various DVII's? I am particularly interested in the differences between the early 160 hp Mercedes model, the 220 hp BMW, and the "high compression Mercedes" (if in fact this was something different than the 160 hp model).

Was this plane as fast as the SE-5A? Thanks in advance for your responses.

[Dan_San_Abbott]

Observer:
In answer to your question the performance of the Fok. D.VII and the D.VIIF were:
Max. airspeed on the deck: D.VII,185 km/ph(114.7mph); D.VIIF, 205 km/hr.(127.imph)
" " @ 2000m (6550 ft.).VII,183km/hr (113.4mph);D.VIIF,200km/hr.(124mph)
Climb to 1000m (3280 ft.) : D.VII, 5min 48 sec. D.VIIF, 2min 24 sec.
Climb to 5000m (16400ft.): D.VII, 31min 30 sec. D.VIIF,15min 18 sec.
Engines Fok. D.VII, 170 ps Mercedes D.IIIa.Fok. D.VIIF, 185 ps BMWIIIa.
Service ceiling: 7000m (22960 ft)
No Fok. D.VII was ever delivered with the 160 ps Mercedes D.III engine. The early production Fok. D.VIIs were delivered with the 170 ps Mercedes D.IIIa, about half were delivered with the Mercedes 180 ps D.IIIaü and the remainder were delivered with the 200 ps Mercedes D.IIIaüv , the performance of which matched the performance of the BMW IIIa powered Fok. D.VII aircraft. About 350 plus were delivered with the BMW IIIa engine.
It is obvious the performance of either Fok. D.VII fell short of the 200 hp Wolseley built Hisso powered S.E.5a:
Max. airspeed @ 6500 feet, 132 mph,@ 10000' 128mph, @ 15000, 115.5mph.
Climb to 5000 ft., 6min 0sec, to 10000 ft,,11 min 20 sec. to 15000 ft. 22 min 55 sec.
Service ceiling 19000 ft.
With the French built Hispano-Suiza the airspeed @ 15000 was 121 mph (195km/hr) and the ceiling was 22000 ft ( 6700 m). The late production S.E.5a with the 200hp Wolseley Viper engine the airspeed on the cek was 137.8mph and 123mph @ 15000' and the climb to 15000' was 19min 55 sec.
Outside of the climbing ability of the BMW IIIa Fok. D.VIIF, I would say the S.E.5a was in control of the fight with equally skille pilots.
blue skies,
Dan-San Abbott

Re: DVII power plant-
I have a library and, like the rest of us, I'm interested in keeping it up to the most accurate info. Unfortunately, everything I have says that the DVII had the Mercedes DIII 'day one' and went to the BMW III 'later on'.
Now, I'd like to get a copy of the book/journal/tract/whatever that HAS your info. Would you please! name your sources?

Hi all,

I am not certain how you look up old threads on this forum, but if you do a search on Mercedes or D.VII you will find some lengthy ones that I posted a great deal to.

For sure some of the information Dan has is the copies of the Armee acceptance sheets for Fokker. This shows every motor number of every powerplant that was installed into a Fokker built Fokker D.VII. From this we can immediately see how many Fokker built D.VIIs have Mana III, Mana IIIa, BMW IIIa, BMW IIIa Opel, Austro Daimler, DM 225 (MAG), Mercedes D.III, Mercedes D.IIIa, Mercedes D.IIIa.v.

I went to Daimler-Benz in Stuttgart and copied every log entry of every Mercedes motor shipped to Fokker. I also made copies of the journals that explained what serial number motor is what version of D.III. I gave copies of all of this material to Dan, so he is probably using some of this material to answer the question.

Notice that I list Mercedes D.III motors. What becomes clear when you look at the acceptance sheets is some of the later D.VIIs have very low numbered Mercedes motors, and when we go to the Daimler delivery books, we see this motor was delivered to Albatros in 1917! How is this possible? Easily explained, the motors were salvaged and taken to rebuild centers. There they would go through the motor and hop-it-up to the latest specifications. So now the motor may put out 190 H.P. The motor still looks like a D.III, but it isn't. There are photos of the Fokker V.11 (D.VII prototype) at Schwerin under final construction and you can clearly see the motor is a D.III with the higher mounted water pump by the magnetoes, but the camshaft housing appears to be from a D.IIIa. I think it is likely Fokker was using a hopped-up D.III.

So it isn't so cut and dry when trying to say exactly what H.P. motor went into what particular aircraft. We can get close though.

BMW motors were in very short supply, and as I stated in the old thread, about 291 Fokker built D.VIIs had BMW motors. Again if you go through the acceptance sheets, you can see an example of where a particular BMW motor was accepted in four different D.VIIs, and that was from Fokker. Certainly BMWs were recycled for Albatros and OAW for their D.VII production.

Best,
Dave