In September 2025, the National Military Museum of the Netherlands (NMM) will receive a major addition to its collection: a Fokker D.VII fighter, one of the rare original examples of this model still in existence in the world. The aircraft will be loaned by the Deutsches Museum in Munich for a period of five years, ing the Dutch institution's collection of military objects.
Designed during the First World War for the German air service (Luftstreitkräfte), the D.VII was one of the most advanced military aircraft models to participate in that conflict, later also serving with various air forces in the latent peace period of the 20s.
The model that will participate in the exchange is the Fokker D.VII D-28 (c/n 4404/18), an aircraft with a unique history. Delivered to the Dutch Naval Air Service (Marineluchtvaartdienst, or simply MLD) in January 1920, the aircraft remained on active military registration until 1937, when it was stored to form part of a future Dutch aviation museum.
However, this plan had to be postponed due to World War II and the invasion of the Netherlands in 1940 by German forces. For the D-28, this meant a new life in a new country, as the aircraft ended up being confiscated by the Nazis and subsequently trafficked into .
The main person interested in the aircraft ended up being Hermann Göring, Chief of Staff of the Luftwaffe and former fighter pilot of the First World War, who even flew the model during the conflict. The main objective in the seizure of the Fokker by the Nazis was to have the D-28 as one of the highlights of the Deutsche Luftfahrt Sammlung, a huge museum located in Berlin dedicated to the cult of German aviation.
However, in yet another abrupt change of direction, the D-28 never reached its destination, as the aircraft was found at the end of the conflict stored in a warehouse in the small Bavarian town of Vilsbiburg, almost 500 km away from the place where the aircraft was supposed to be theoretically on display!
Due to the post-war chaos and the lack of documents proving the aircraft's origin, the fighter ended up being handed over by the Allies to the care of the Deutsches Museum, which incorporated the Fokker into its collection in the 50s.
It was not until the 80s, when the first major restoration was carried out on the aircraft, that the Fokker D.VII D-28's history began to be revealed. The first trace of its past in the Netherlands was when the fighter's paint was scraped off by curators, and evidence of orange markings, the color of the Dutch air force in the early 20s, began to be revealed.
Data collected by researchers and experts on the aircraft in the following decades, especially taking into data from the Dutch Army and Air Force, gave even more credibility to the theory of Dutch origin, which is widely accepted due to other evidence discovered later on the aircraft.
It was this story that led to the agreement between the NMM and the Deutsches Museum, with this agreement confirming, albeit provisionally, the return of the aircraft to the Netherlands after 85 years. This is the second Fokker D.VII to be part of the NMM collection, as the institution already has a D.VII (2528/18) painted in the colors of the Dutch Army Air Force (LVA) on permanent display.
One detail yet to be confirmed is whether the D-28 will be specially painted in its original Naval Air Service colors for the exhibition in the Netherlands, as the aircraft currently features generic paintwork alluding to German fighters from the First World War.
Fokker D.VII: hunter par excellence
Fokker aircraft gained a great reputation during the First World War, with German-Dutch engineer Anthony Fokker making a name for himself with his extremely high-performance aircraft, the D.VII being the final evolution of a family of aircraft that had its origins in Fokker's first successful model, the Eindecker of 1915.
The fighter aroused the fear of enemy fighter pilots when it appeared over the skies of the Western Front in the final months of World War I, due to its maneuverability, firepower and lethality in combat. However, the fighter's main highlight was its speed, exceeding 200 km/h in its last versions – something somewhat surprising for an aircraft of the conflict.
However, the defeat of its main trading partner in the war, the German government, left Fokker-Flugzeugwerke in a difficult position at the end of the conflict, unable to build the products that had propelled the company to success. To this end, the company sought new markets, trading with nations that were wartime enemies and others that had decided to remain neutral during the conflict.
One of Fokker's biggest markets in the post-war period turned out to be, curiously enough, the designer's homeland, the Netherlands. The engineer ended up restructuring his entire company on the outskirts of Amsterdam to meet a large order from the Dutch government for more than 40 D.VIIs, which would equip the Dutch Army Air Force, the Naval Air Force and the Air Detachment of the Netherlands Indies Army.
The Dutch D.VIIs had a decent operational history, operating as air superiority aircraft until the mid-20s, with some aircraft having their original 185hp BMW engines replaced by 230hp Armstrong-Siddeley Puma engines. The remaining D.VIIs were subsequently transferred to Dutch army flying schools, with the last Fokker D.VII of this type being withdrawn from service in 1938.
