By : Fred Langan

The Fokker D.VII sits in an unheated wooden building with no air conditioning. That is one reason it is in such good shape; another is that no one has mucked with it, apart from a Royal Canadian Air Force servicing in 1963.

The D.VII entered the First World War in 1918. Manfred von Richthofen test flew an early D.VII but was killed before it entered active service. Two future Nazi leaders flew it in combat: Herman Göring and Rudolf Hess.

By the end of the war there were about 800 D.VIIs left, says Edward Soye, a Canadian historian and pilot who has studied the D.VII. It was the only German weapon of war singled out by name in section IV of the Armistice of November 11, 1918.

“Surrender in good condition by the German Armies of the following war material: 5,000 guns (2,500 heavy, 2,500 field). 25,000 machine guns. 3,000 trench mortars, 1,700 fighting and bombing aeroplanes—in the first place, all D7’s and all night-bombing aeroplanes.”

Canada’s War Trophy

The Dominion of Canada felt its contribution to the war effort justified its own share of war booty. It received more than two dozen D.VIIs, including plane number 6810/18, the one in the Knowlton museum.

The Fokker D.VII made it to the Musée Lac-Brome Museum because of a local politician, Senator George Foster, who had been deputy prime minister at one point during the war and whose son won a Distinguished Flying Cross. The Fokker arrived on May 27, 1920, with the Canadian Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden giving a speech marking its arrival in Foster’s hometown.

There was some talk at one stage of selling the plane. The Canadian government pointed out it owns the aircraft and it was not the museum’s to sell.

The Canadian Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa sent a team of technicians to judge the plane’s condition. The verdict was the aircraft was well adapted to its environment.

It wasn’t the first time a sale was discussed. Howard Hughes, the American industrialist, airman and Hollywood producer, wanted to buy Knowlton’s Fokker D.VII for his 1930 First World War air epic, Hell’s Angels. The museum’s board said no, though another Canadian D.VII was used in the film.

A Unique, Unrestored Survivor

There are seven remaining D.VIIs.

“All have been heavily restored except for the 6810-18 in Knowlton. It is the only unrestored Fokker D.VII in the world. It is a priceless relic of the First World War,” said Soye, who wrote his master’s thesis at the Royal Military College on trophies from the First World War.

Perhaps the one thing that makes the Knowlton D.VII unique is that it still has the original fabric, a thick linen, from its manufacture in 1918. Many of the other planes have original-looking fabric, but not original.