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Dear Sirs, this is a Fokker D.VII, actually a converted Travel Air 2000, a so-called "Wichita Fokker", from the Tallmantz Collection in the 1960s. Painted in the colors of Lt. Ernst Udet. "Lo" is the nickname of Udet's first wife Eleonore Zink, with whom he was married from 1919 to 1923. Best regards M.Schmidt

This is a photo of American fighter ace William P. Erwin in the cockpit of a Fokker D.VII, apparently captured/turned-over to the United States after the Armistice of 1918. Bill Erwin would perish while participating in the search for aviators lost during the 1927 Dole Air Race. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Portwood_Erwin Here is another photo of Erwin in the SDASM's Paul A. Smith Collection: www.flickr.com/photos/sdasmarchives/8560887758/

The five Fokker D.VIIs used by the Victory Loan Flying Circus, Mid-West Flight were taken from a cohort of factory-new machines that the German government turned over to American forces at Koblenz, Germany on January 1, 1919, in accordance with the armistice of November 1918. This photo of Capt. Erwin was taken at the Jackson, Mississippi air show on April 11, 1919. During his flight that afternoon, he made a forced landing on account of motor trouble. He landed in the only cleared field available, but due to a ditch in the center of the field, he broke his propeller. This was the only damage to the plane and Erwin was uninjured. Afterwards, they requested new Fokker propellers from the Curtiss Airplane Co. in Buffalo, NY. (Reference source: their War Diary and Library of Congress)

Two Fokker fuselages have recently been unloaded from their end-door baggage car and await assembly of their undercarriage strut/axel fairing structures with port and starboard wheels (one assembly lying on ground in center of photo between the two fuselages) prior to transporting them to nearby Melgaard Park in Aberdeen, South Dakota on April 24, 1919. This was the VLFC Mid-West Flight's 12th air show, and is documented in South Dakota History, Vol. 46, No. 1, 2016.