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Updated: June 18, 2025
After the North Sea Wind fog, a general calm had settled down upon that death-scarred region. Over the front and about No-Man's-Land an occasional flare or star-shell would go up. One of these came unusually close to the swiftly moving Fokker. Immediately after that came bombing from Archies stationed along the enemy front.
Swooping down from behind, one of them, a Fokker, riddled Chapman's plane. One bullet cut deep into his scalp, but Chapman, a master pilot, escaped from the trap, and fired several shots to show he was still safe. A stability control had been severed by a bullet. Chapman held the broken rod in one hand, managed his machine with the other, and succeeded in landing on a near-by aviation field.
There have been critical times, as for example when the Fokker scourge of late 1915 and early 1916 laid low so many of the observation craft. But the Fokkers were satisfactorily dealt with by the de Haviland and the F.E.8. pusher scouts and the F.E. "battleplane," as the newspapers of the period delighted to call it.
One of the reasons given by the French for their action is the construction of Fokker monoplanes by the Germans, which are so accurate a copy of the earlier Morane monoplanes of the French that they could not be distinguished from them in the air. Furthermore, the German copy of the Morane was far speedier and could easily outdistance or overtake the French machines of the same type.
"That you, ladies?" Byers turned suddenly, then his eyes sought his glass again. "Why, it is quite evident that the machine is a Fokker and disabled. He'll make it all right, I guess." "That is a German machine, isn't it?" asked Avella anxiously. "Mightn't it be a hostile one?" queried Andra. "The plane is of hostile make, Miss Walsen, but the chap inside is one of us, you may be sure. There!
The whole affair is so swift just one lightning dive that long before a fighter can reach the Hun the latter is away thousands of feet below and heading for home and safety. Every Fokker pilot knows that once his surprise dive is over he has no chance against another machine the build of the Fokker only allows this one method of attack and he does not stop to argue about it.
The Germans seldom cross into our territory, unless on a bombarding jaunt, and thus practically all the fighting takes place on their side of the line. Thaw dropped his Fokker in the morning, and on the afternoon of the same day there was a big combat far behind the German trenches.
A letter to his father described the combat in his own brief and direct manner, without a superfluous word: "Combat with two Fokkers. The first, trapped, and his passenger killed, dived upon me without having seen me. Then combat with the second Fokker, a one-seated machine shooting through the propeller, as rapid and easily handled as mine.
Claude had tried yesterday, when he lent Victor some shirts, to make him talk about his aerial adventures, but upon that subject he was as close as a clam. He admitted that the long red scar on his upper arm had been drilled by a sharpshooter from a German Fokker, but added hurriedly that it was of no consequence, as he had made a good landing.
Then, gaining speed by a quick dive, he looped with a suddenness that brought the Camel squarely on the tail of the remaining pursuer who was diving steeply. Both guns began jumping with delight as Larkin thumbed the releases. What luck! Square in the ring sight! The telltale tracers poked their white fingers into the vitals of the Fokker tri-plane.
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