Eduard 1/48 Fokker E.V (D.VIII) By Jim Schubert

History

As the history of Germany’s Fokker D.VIII is quite well known, I will simply skim the highlights here. The Fokker V 28 was one of the designs chosen for production from the Second fighter Competition by the Idflieg in May/June 1918. 200 were ordered immediately as the E.V – fifth production design from Fokker. E.Vs were at the front in early July and were immediately plagued with a series of catastrophic wing failures. The type was grounded until quality problems in the manufacture of the wing could be identified, corrected and tested. It was not until early October 1918 that the type returned to service with new wings and was redesignated D.VIII. Only one WWI aerial victory is credited to the E.V/D.VIII; ultimately the E.V/D.VIII caused more German losses than it did allied losses.

Post WWI, The Netherlands, Poland, Italy, France and the USA obtained examples of the D.VIII for evaluation and use.

The Kit

This evaluation starts with a great first impression: the lidded box is strong enough for its intended use and the box top painting by S. Tarasovic is attractive and is well printed. With the lid off the box it gets better. The 12 page instruction booklet is beautifully printed, with lots of color, on good slick paper. The four color schemes, shown here, are all printed in full color. The color scheme illustrations, based on recent research, offer the option of painting the wing top and bottom in Fokker streaky-green or in solid green. The experts are still debating the question of streaky or solid green. I’ll go with the solid color because it’s easier to do and I’m chicken.

The good first impression continues to grow as you get into the physical components of the kit. The three sprue trees contain 67 parts cleanly injection molded in a buff colored styrene. Two complete, one-piece wings are included for this monoplane! One is smooth and clean, as we would normally expect; the other has the very subtle, uneven, waviness characteristic of a light ply covered structure. I think they could have left out the plain, smooth wing. There is a silver colored sheet of photo-etched metal with some of its 67 parts pre-painted. The three decal sheets provide fully for the four schemes set out in the instructions. An interesting, and puzzling, thing about the decals is that although lozenge material is provided for the fuselage interior, it is neither reversed nor lighter than the exterior lozenge. All the tiny stencils, weight tables, &c. are included along with wood grain laminations for the propeller! A die-cut painting mask is included but, apart from the wheel masks, it is not clear to me what it is to be used for.

Although illustrated in the instructions, neither a windscreen nor rigging material is provided in the kit. The wing struts look weak to me and I will replace the two longer ones on each side with flat brass bar stock of the correct dimensions from the Detail Associates brand of supplies available at model railroad shops.

Inevitably the release of this kit in 2006 begs that it be compared with the 12 year old Dragon/DML release of 1994 and also with Eduard’s own prior release in 1997. Unfortunately I do not have the earlier Eduard kit No. 8003. It was, however, reviewed in Windsock magazine Volume 13, Number 6 of November/December 1997. The Dragon kit has 23 fewer plastic and 34 fewer PE parts than the current Eduard release but does include a windscreen and rigging wire. The Dragon kit is very good but the two-piece wing suffers from two fairly serious span-wise sink marks, which must be filled and sanded out. Dragon, peculiarly, provides PE wing struts. The Dragon kit includes markings for only one plane and their lozenge is unbelievably bright and contrasty. It’s a very good kit but Eduard’s are both better.

Conclusion

This kit is a winner on all points. You can easily build an accurate, beautiful model out-of-the-box needing only to add a windscreen and rigging. An improvement that I would prefer (for the next release) is separate control surfaces. Kudos to Eduard.

I paid $29.95 plus 8.9% State Sales Tax for my kit at Emil Minerich’s Skyway Model shop in Seattle.

Thanks to the guys from the WWI List internet discussion group for their help with this review.

Main References:

• Profile No. 67, The Fokker D.VIII: J. M. Bruce, Profile Publications, UK, 1966.

• Windsock DataFile 25, Fokker D.VIII: P. M. Grosz, Albatros Productions, UK, 1991, ISBN 0-948414-29-4.

• Scale Models, March 1981, Drawing by Ian Stair.

• Scale Models, December 1981, long letter from P.M. Grosz.

• Model Airplane News, January 1974, Drawings by Phillip Drecos.

• Scale Models, May 1979, four color schemes by Ray Rimell

Other Useful References:

• Aeroplane Monthly: Feb. ’88, June ’93, and Dec. ’98.

• Air Enthusiast: Nos. 17 and 38.

• WWI Aero: Nos. 123, 130, 133, 136, 138, 140, 141, 142, 147, 155, 157 & 161.

• Windsock: 2/3, 7/1, 9/5, 10/1, 10/5, 13/6, 14/1 & 14/3.

• Fine Scale Modeler: Feb. ’88 & Nov. ’89.