Start of the "Fokker Scourge"

In early October 1915, as the British autumn offensive was dying down at Loos, airmen of the Royal Flying Corps increasingly met a new opponent over the German lines: the small single-seat monoplane fighter Fokker E.I, which the Germans called the Eindecker, the “monoplane”. The British official history of the air war, The War in the Air, writes that the influence of these machines began to be felt “towards the end of the battle of Loos, in October 1915”, and that they kept their ascendancy until roughly May 1916. The period went down in history as the “Fokker Scourge”, in Polish literature also called the “bicz Fokkera” (the Fokker whip). The date of 1 October is conventional. No single event on that day started the German ascendancy, which had been building gradually since the summer, and the term itself was coined by the British press only in 1916.

A machine gun that fired through the propeller

The Fokker’s superiority came not from the aircraft’s performance but from its armament. Since 1914 airmen on both sides had been looking for a way to fire straight ahead, in the direction of flight, aiming with the whole aircraft. The obstacle was the propeller at the front. In spring 1915 the French pilot Roland Garros mounted a machine gun firing through the propeller on his Morane-Saulnier L, protecting the blades with steel wedges that deflected the bullets that struck them. In April he shot down three German aircraft in this way, but on 18 April he himself had to land behind the German lines, and his machine, despite his attempt to burn it, fell into German hands.

The German air authorities told several manufacturers to copy the French device. The works of the Dutch designer Anton Fokker, who worked for Germany, went further and built a true synchronisation gear: a mechanism driven by the engine released the gun’s trigger only when no propeller blade was in front of the muzzle. Fokker later claimed the invention for himself, but according to some researchers it was designed by an engineer of his firm, Heinrich Lübbe. The device was fitted to a light monoplane modelled on the French Morane-Saulnier. In May and June 1915 Fokker demonstrated it to German airmen, and in the summer the first machines reached front-line units, one or two to each reconnaissance unit.

Immelmann and Boelcke

The British usually date the start of the “scourge” to 1 August 1915. That morning British aircraft bombed the airfield of Feldflieger-Abteilung 62 (PL) near Douai. Two pilots of the unit took off after them, Oswald Boelcke and Max Immelmann. Boelcke’s gun jammed, but Immelmann caught one of the bombers, flown solo without an observer, and forced it to land. It was his first victory. A few weeks earlier, in July, Leutnant Kurt Wintgens had scored the first, though unconfirmed, successes in a Fokker over the French lines.

By the autumn both pilots from Douai were heroes of the German press. Immelmann was called the “Eagle of Lille”. The British official history records that on 10 October he claimed his fourth victory, over a British aircraft photographing German positions near Lille. The Fokker pilots circled high over their own lines, waited for passing reconnaissance aircraft and dived on them from above, preferably out of the sun. After one long burst they continued their dive out of range, then climbed for another attack. Immelmann also popularised the manoeuvre that still bears his name, a turn combining a climb with a change of direction.

An ascendancy greater in minds than in numbers

There were not many Fokkers. At the end of July about fifteen were flying on the whole front, in December about forty. The German command forbade them to fly over enemy lines, so that the secret of the synchronisation gear would not fall into Allied hands. According to tallies based on German data, Fokker pilots claimed no more than 28 victories in the second half of 1915, many of them over French aircraft, and Immelmann and Boelcke scored about half of them. Rising British losses also had other causes, among them the increasingly bold operations of German two-seaters and the growing number of British machines at the front. The British official history later admitted that the Fokker’s moral effect was “far greater than its actual successes warranted”. As early as October the RFC command in France, led since August by Brigadier-General Hugh Trenchard, noted with concern that some pilots were avoiding combat.

For the time being the Allies had no answer. The most numerous British aircraft, the two-seat B.E.2c, was stable and good for observation but slow, and its observer sat in front, surrounded by wings and struts, and could not fire freely. Other machines carried Lewis guns fed from drums that had to be changed in combat, while the Fokker fired a belt-fed gun.

Winter brought the heaviest losses. On 14 January 1916 the RFC command ordered that every reconnaissance aircraft be escorted by at least three other machines in close formation, which began formation flying. In Britain the matter became political, and in Parliament it was said that airmen in obsolete aircraft, “Fokker fodder”, were being murdered rather than killed. German superiority was broken only by new Allied fighters: the French Nieuport 11, concentrated in fighter squadrons during the Battle of Verdun, and the British Airco DH.2 and F.E.2b, which appeared at the front in the winter and spring of 1916.