German Aircraft type with the most victories?

[Ace McCudden]

Hello everybody, first post, so could well be asking an already much asked question.
I tend to dip in and out of different periods of aerial warfare, hence my ignorance in not already knowing the answer to the following question.......
We know the Sopwith Camel was the most successful Allied aircraft kill-wise, what was the most successful German design?

[Taz]

Ace- Welcome to the Forum and hope you enjoy yourself. The Fokker D.VII by far. Even though it only operated from ~May-Nov 1918, it flew in a target-rich environment in a mainly defensive role. Since it was easy to fly near its limits, it made mediocre pilots good, good pilots outstanding, and outstanding pilots multiple aces. Many top aces doubled or tripled their scores when they began flying the D.VII, especially those fortunate enough to fly the overcompressed 185-hp BMW.III.

Taz
Terry Phillips

[Pips]

That's interesting. I had always thought that the Albatross D series would have been the most prolific scorer, given it's length of service and that it too was flown by almost all aces of note.

Does anyone have any figures on claims by both the Albatross and Fokker fighters?

[Ace McCudden]

Taz, many thanks for the welcome and reply.
I was lucky enough to see a D.VII fly at Old Warden a few years back before they grounded it for display in a museum.
Pips, when I first pondered the question, I did wonder if maybe the Albatross family were the most successful victory wise, but the D.VII does make sense.

[Romani]

I think this question came up before and the answer was the Albatros D series.

Even if the air combats in 1918 were larger in scale, the DVII took months to replace the older fighters, and air operations by the Germans were curtailed by lack of fuel in the last 3 months.

Originally Posted by Ace McCudden

We know the Sopwith Camel was the most successful Allied aircraft kill-wise

*cough!*cough!*

One thing that amuses me is that aside the Camel, how every British fighter is uncritically appraised as so good and effective. The Pup, the Triplane, the Camel, the Dolphin, (I excluded the Snipe as it barely took part) the SE5a, even the Bristol 2-seater, and that's not counting the SPAD and Nieuport! and how skilled were the British aces. Makes you wonder why the German air force wasn't wiped out earlier, and that's without taking into account the French as well.

If you look at the revised victory scores in the British aces section of this forum, and take a critical analysis of the nature of air combat, and the performance of each airplane, you will have to downgrade a lot the successes of the British types. I suspect that the Bristol was overrated.

Most of those airplanes only had one machinegun, and only a handful of pilots would be able to score with them. The Camel probably has the lion share of kills on account of the twin machineguns and its numbers, but certainly much lower than the 1,300 claims, and the SE5a would be a close competitor, making it by far the most effective British fighter.

It would be interesting to make a breakdown of victory claims per type compared to squadrons that employed them, and with corrections for OOC (out of control) and shared victories.

EDIT: I am probably wrong, even counting the Austro-Hungarian Albatros, the DVII ended in top, but what I wanted to say is that victories not only depend of the airplane qualities but they depend a lot on the men that fly them.

I said the Bristol was overrated, and that's because a couple Australian squadrons operating it were aggressive and successful with it.

[Romani]

To whom may concern:

Frank Olynk posted there a list of claims by each German type

Here's the link to the 1998 thread:

Most "successful" German fighter

[Kilian]

Confirmed!

[Gregvan]

Hi All,

First of all, welcome to the forum, "Ace McCudden". As noted, this topic or similar ones turn up pretty frequently on the 'drome. It's pretty well accepted that the pilots of ALL nations overclaimed and were over-credited during WWI; having said that, it's the opinion of many (myself included) that the British and American Air Services were the 'worst' at this. (I'm now ducking for cover). This in no way detracts from the courage, accomplishments and sacrifice of their airmen.

However, like Romani I'm a little tired of the Sopwith Camel being touted as the "most successful Allied Scout" in terms of "kills" (another term which is sometimes controversial here on the 'drome). I've often wondered where the oft-touted figure of 1,294 aircraft downed by the Camel comes from and when/where it was first quoted. I'll wager that number contains a large percentage of "OOCs" which probably wouldn't count for much in the French or German air services. Also, has anyone ever tabulated the number of victories attributed to the superb Spad VII or (less so) the XIII? The Spad VII served for a very long time indeed, and was flown by the French, British, Belgian, Italian, American and Russian air services - has anyone ever successfully tallied the total number of "victims" claimed by all those SPAD VII pilots on various fronts? I doubt it, but I'm sure it would give the Camel a run for the title. Don't even get me started on the number of BRITISH victims of the Camel's eccentricities...

Some historians take this even further. In his otherwise terrific book "Sopwith Camel: King of Combat", Chaz Bowyer says the Camel was "the most successful aerial combatant; having accounted for more of its opponents than any other single aircraft type of any nation participating in the war." OH, REALLY???

Did Chaz have the official, fully recorded number of "victims" of, say, the Spad VII, Spad XIII or Fokker D.VII to compare the Camel's inflated 1,294 with? I seriously doubt it.

In Frank Olynyk's valiant and careful effort to compile such numbers for German a/c cited in the other thread noted above, he came up with 2,572 aircraft credited to the Fokker D.VII. I have no doubt this is inflated, but he was doing a careful and honest attempt using the best data available. We simply don't have the detailed records for German aerial victories that we do for the British. We may know when and what number of Allied aircraft were dredited to such and such a German fighter pilot on any given day, but it's often difficult to know with 100% certainty what kind of aircraft he was flying. This is the problem Norman Franks and I wrestled with constantly when writing the ace series books for Osprey. Nonetheless, German fighter pilots shot down large numbers of Allied a/c in August, "Bloody September" and "Ominous October" of 1918 in the heaviest aerial fighting of the war, and the D.VII was their primary engine of destruction - in spite of fuel shortages and other problems.

I also think it's a mistake to lump all of the Albatros D-types together and add up the victories of "the Albatros D series" as if it were one type (for comparison to the Fokker D.VII, etc). The Albatros D.I of October 1916 was a very different beast from the Albatros D.Va which flew in large numbers well into 1918. We might as well try to lump all of the Nieuport types from the 11 through the 17 and on through the 27 (or even 28) into "the Nieuport series" and talk of them as if they were one type - they weren't, and neither were the Albatros D types.

According to Frank Olynyk's compilation - the most reasonable numbers which are easily available - the Albatros D.III was credited with 891 victories, with another possible 33 going to either the D.II or D.III, and another 115 "shared" between the D.III or D.V. That doesn't take into account all of the victories chalked by by the superb Austrian Oeffag-built versions of the D.III (somebody could tally up those victories pretty easily). The series 253 Oeffag D.III could be said to be the apex of development of the Albatros fighter, for the Austrians seem to have solved the wing failure problem, and kept raising the hp of the engine up to the 225 hp Daimler. The Oeffag-built D.IIIs were very good fighters indeed and the Austrians did quite well with them.

Frank Olynyk also says that the German Albatros D.V talled 1071 victories, with 21 "shared" between the D.V and Va, and the D.Va getting 546 victories. That makes 1638 for the Albatros D.V/Va - take that, Sopwith Camel! Again, no doubt an inflated figure, but so all are the others. I still think the Fokker D.VII takes the cake among German fighters.

As Barrett would say, "rant off".

Greg

[Dan_San_Abbott]

Gentlemen:
I would have to agree with Greg about lumping all the Albatros fighter together, they are not the same. I would think that each would have to stand by itself. Although Alb.D.V and D.Va look alike, are really two different machines, structurally and weight-wise. there would be a closer coorelation bewteen the Alb.D.III(OAW) and the D.Va, but they are still not the same machine. ( I am not talking about the rudders.)
There is no doubt in my mind that the Fok.D.VII was the best an most likely achieved the most victories, but I have reservation on the figure of 2572 victories. The Fok.D.VII entered the fray in May 1918, and those for the most part were delivered to the three Jagdgeschwadern. The monthly deliveries of about 400 D.VII were not sufficient to to meet he replacement requirements and equipment many of the other Jagstaffeln each month. It was probably late September before most of the Jagdstaffeln were re-equipped with the Fok.D.VII. By war's end over 2900 D.VII were delivered, around 950 plus were for initial equipment of the Jagdstaffeln and the rest were replacements of damaged or lost machines.
The OAW built Alb.D.III and the Albatros and OAW built Alb.D.Va machines soldiered on to the end of the war and had to gain a sizeable number of Allied aircraft. they had fought throught the battles of autumn and winter of 1917-1918 and through all the German offensives from March to July 1918 and the defensive Battles of the Somme to the Argonne to the end of the war, while the D.VII got into the act from the German attack of 27 May onwards. While the Jagdstaffeln were being re-equipped with the D.VII they were replacing the Alb.D.III (OAW), Alb.D.Va and the Pfalz D.IIIa in the second half of 1918.
I think The Albatros D.Va would be very close to the Fok.D.VII in victories, if not, ahead by virtue of longevity of service ??
Blue skies,
Dan-San

[Pips]

Just so we all know what we're talking about, here are the figures from the post Romani mentioned above.

Based on the numbers provided by Frank, the Albatros D series was the most destructive German aeroplane.
i) There are 2856 credits for the Alb D's attributed to them alone, with another 143 victories that were gained by either an Alb D plane or by something else in the same squadron at the time. Of these 143, only 23 might have been done in by a D7.
ii) 2573 claims are listed for the Fokker D7.
iii) Only 243 with 8 additional possibles by the Dr1/F1.

Shame there doesn't seem to be the available same detailed breakdown of Allied type claims, especially the main frontline ones like the Se.5/5a (5,205 produced), Camel (5,734 produced), SPAD VII (5,600 produced) and the SPAD XIII (8472 produced). Compared to the above, the Camel's performance seems positively pedestrian. One wonders just how accurate the oft quoted figure of 1,294 is, especially as no one seems to know it's origins. But given the performance above of German fighters, it would seem that the claims by the Camel are well understated.

And how do the figures above stack up against overall losses (shot down, crashed, damaged? The following numbers are from the 'Aircraft Statistics' section on this site.

French Aircraft Production - 67,987..........Losses to all causes 52,640.
British Aircraft Production - 58,144...........Losses to all causes 35,973.
German Aircraft Production - 48,537.........Losses to all causes 27,637.

Other than the fact that the above figures are absolutely frightful, the first thing that comes to mind is; are the claims figures - for any nation - grossly understated? Is it possible to refine the losses in terms of enemy action (broken down to flak v fighters), training, non-operational losses, etc?