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Concept
Fokker Scourge
Summary
The Fokker Scourge (Fokker Scare) occurred during the First World War from July 1915 to early 1916. Imperial German Flying Corps (Die Fliegertruppen) units, equipped with Fokker Eindecker (Fokker monoplane) fighters, gained an advantage over the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and the French Aéronautique Militaire.
The Fokker was the first service aircraft to be fitted with a machine gun synchronised to fire through the arc of the propeller without striking the blades. The tactical advantage of aiming the gun by aiming the aircraft and the surprise of its introduction were factors in its success.
This period of German air superiority ended with the arrival in numbers of the French Nieuport 11 and British Airco DH.2 fighters, which were capable of challenging the Fokkers, although the last Fokkers were not finally replaced until August–September 1916.
The term "Fokker Scourge" was coined by the British press in mid-1916, after the Eindeckers had been outclassed by the new Allied types. Use of the term coincided with a political campaign to end a perceived dominance of the Royal Aircraft Factory in the supply of aircraft to the Royal Flying Corps, a campaign that was begun by the pioneering aviation journalist C. G. Grey and Noel Pemberton Billing M.P., founder of Pemberton-Billing Ltd (Supermarine from 1916) and a great enthusiast for aerial warfare.
As aerial warfare developed, the Allies gained a lead over the Germans by introducing machine-gun armed types such as the Vickers F.B.5 Gunbus fighter and the Morane-Saulnier L. By early 1915, the German Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL, Supreme Army Command) had ordered the development of machine-gun-armed aircraft to counter those of the Allies. The new "C" class, armed two-seaters and twin-engined "K" (later "G") class aircraft such as the AEG G.I were attached in ones and twos to Feldflieger Abteilungen (FFA) artillery-observation and reconnaissance detachments for "fighter" sorties, mostly the escort of unarmed aircraft.
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