Albatros D.II (1916)

Airborne Shark

Fast, brutish and heavily armed, the Albatros looked as deadly as it was. Its twin machine guns, allied to a powerful Austro-Daimler engine, meant that it could wreak havoc when attacking and accelerate out of danger when pursued. However, the design had shortcomings. The machine's radiator was mounted in the centre section of the upper wing. This became a target for allied airmen - it was close to pilot's head, so a miss on one could easily hit the other, and a puncture showered the pilot with boiling fluid. Later models featured an offset radiator to avoid the weakness.

Though more powerful, the DII's successor introduced a further problem. German designers admired the sesquiplane configuration favoured by Nieuport. This had a narrower chord to the lower wing, supported by a single spar. Manufacture was simplified, and the Idflieg believed, wrongly as it turned out, that the narrow lower wing was responsible for the Nieuport 11's excellent performance. In combat, the lower wing tended to twist and fail when subjected to rapid direction changes or high speeds. The Albatros's streamlined shape gave it an extremely high diving speed, resulting in flutter and eventual destruction of the lower plane. It was many months before the problem was fully identified and pilots advised to avoid high-speed dives. Various measures were tested to ameliorate the problem, but it remained a weakness of the D.III and later models.

Manfred von Richthofen flew the Albatros, and achieved more of his 80 victories on the type than on his famous triplane. He makes a brief, uncredited appearance in The Larks, flashing by in the dogfight that culminates in the death of his idol, Oswald Boelcke.

My Picture

This is my attempt at depicting the DII in which the universally admired German ace, Oswald Boelcke, met his end - as witnessed in The Larks.

While there are many photos of Boelcke, it's difficult to find good quality images of his aircraft. As a result, much of this is best-guess - again. The accuracies, such as they are, are thanks to the expertise and depth of knowledge of those remarkable guys at The Aerodrome, and also the beautiful profile wrought by Don Holloway of Manfred von Richthofen's Albatros DII. The many inaccuracies are all my own work.