[Chock]

I don't think you can always read too much into the superiority of a design based on it being around longer than another one, even with early to mid war designs, which appeared at a time when developments and discoveries were coming thick and fast. With the speedy turnaround of WW1 designs, a plane that was superior one week could literally be outclassed the following week, but such types weren't always destined to become hangar queens.

The classic example of that would be the Eindecker, which was by any standards a merely adequate monoplane. Under any normal circumstances the little Fokker monoplane would have been a relatively unknown type, and one that had many contemporary types which were certainly its equal as aircraft - but stick a forward firing MG on any of them and give them to innovators such as Boelcke and Immelman and you had a world-beater (for a time at least).

Boelcke and Richthofen had performed similar wonders with the early Albatroses, yet the Albatros was a design that was showing its age by 1917, but it was what they had at the time and was what they were set up to manufacture, and with fingers in various pies, thus it soldiered on. A not dissimilar situation occurred with Germany in WW2, where the bf109 became the warplane that was produced in greater numbers than any other, despite designer Kurt Tank's Fw190 being a much better fighter by 1943. Regardless, the 190 remained less well developed, and it came from a less-favoured manufacturer in the Nazis eyes, with a consequent lower priority for engine deliveries. It didn't help that it was more complex to build either, when Germany was reliant on forced labour for much of its manufacture. And many of its best brains had gone up the chimneys of places like Auschwitz, too, which was another problem when it came to innovative production.

There are often other factors involved too, such as which company is in favour with a particular Government department or person who gives the go ahead for something, and whether the company that makes a particular plane is well placed to meet large orders. Willy Messerschmitt was on the wrong end of that equation for a number of years prior to WW2, after several high ranking Nazi politicians were killed in Lufthansa aircraft made by bf (whom he was the designer for). A situation which Hugo Junkers used to his advantage for a good few years, being well aware of how knowing which way the political wind was blowing could affect things, since he had been forced to team up with Fokker during WW1 for a while. As a result, his rival Messerschmitt was often not even invited to enter designs to compete for aircraft contracts, in fact only being begrudgingly allowed to enter the contest for the contract which eventually saw the bf 109 win a fly-off competition for a front line fighter because those who wanted to keep Messerschmitt in his place arrogantly assumed he would lose the contest. It was this which turned things around for bf and Messerschmitt, and in a similar fashion to Fokker's purchase of Oberursel, Messerschmitt got his claws into bf when it became favoured once more.

Back in WW1, such scenarios were ones which the pragmatic Anthony Fokker realised, which prompted him to acquire a large share the rotary engine maker Oberursel. Over in Britain, a good example of similarly practical thinking, is the RAF SE5a, which is distinctly utilitarian in appearance, and it looks nowhere near as pretty as some other aeroplanes of the time, nor is it as aerodynamic, but it was designed that way so that it could be churned out in larger numbers, using a variety of engines with just a simple redesign. This at a time when the British aircraft industry was still dependent on traditional woodworking skills to make aeroplanes, and Henry Ford's 'production line' concept was still a very new idea. So anything that could speed manufacturing up was a plus, as Fokker found out with his metal-fuselage model DVII, which found rapid favour. He could have built the DVII from wood, and in fact did make one or two from wood on the offchance that metal might end up in short supply.

Thus, a large part of the desire for the DVII to be surrendered was very similar to the seizure of rockets and flying bombs at the end of WW2 by various allied nations, being not so much about the superiority of the craft itself, as the construction techniques and technology employed on the thing. In the case of the DVII airframe, it was the welding techniques used to create the fuselages, and the tempering of the metal in the engine parts that most of them were interested in looking at.

Perhaps the best example of that happening was the Boeing company, which had been founded by William Boeing to make seaplanes for the US Navy. William Boeing saw that as a suitable venture because he had previously made his fortune in the lumber business and was knowledgeable about wood. But when the Boeing company examined the DVII after the Great War, they started employing the metal fabrication techniques they learned about from examining the DVII. Most famously, this happened on the Boeing B40 (Boeing's first ever airliner), which was originally a flop with a wooden fuselage, but which ushered in the post war flying boom in the US when redesigned with more metal fabrication and re-engined with the Pratt and Whitney Wasp (the development of that engine was something William Boeing helped to fund). Despite being air-cooled, the P&W Wasp radial was an engine designed after the Wright company's boss (who left to form Pratt and Whitney) had taken a good look at the construction methods used in BMW and Mercedes engines - these being the ones which were fitted to those confiscated DVIIs. The power to weight ratio of the Wasp, combined with the B40's airframe using Fokker's construction methods, were what made Boeing a successful aircraft company.

So we have Reinhold Platz to thank for that in large part. Platz was Fokker's designer following the death of Martin Kreutzer in a flying accident in mid 1916, who previously held the post. Platz had been Fokker's chief welder, working with him as far back as 1912 on Fokker's Spider monoplane. Anthony Fokker might have been the guy who sketched out the ideas for aeroplane designs, but it was Platz who engineered them into physical form, with his practical knowledge of metallurgy and welding techniques. And that was the real secret to much of their success.

So we can see that there is often more to the success of an aircraft than simply what flies over the battlefield, or indeed what flies off the drawing board and ends up in the hangar.

Al