In April 1917, Albatros Flugzeugwerke received an order from the Inspectorate of Flying Troops for an improved successor to the deadly D.III. Chief designer Robert Thelen produced the D.V, which retained the same 170 hp Mercedes D.IIIa engine and sesquiplane wing arrangement but introduced a sleek, elliptical cross-section fuselage that was 32 kg lighter. The prototype flew late in April 1917, and the type entered service in May. Pilots were immediately disappointed. The D.V offered almost no performance improvement over the D.III, and its lower wing was structurally even more vulnerable. Within the month, fatal crashes due to wing failure forced the Idflieg to conduct belated stress tests; they concluded that the sesquiplane layout was dangerously weak. Manfred von Richthofen, in a July 1917 letter, dismissed the D.V as “so obsolete and so ridiculously inferior to the English that one can’t do anything with this aircraft.” Albatros responded with the D.Va, featuring stronger wing spars, heavier ribs, and a reinforced fuselage, but the modifications added weight without curing the fundamental problem. Nevertheless, because the Fokker Dr.I was grounded for wing failures of its own and the Pfalz D.III was mediocre, the D.Va remained the Luftstreitkräfte’s mainstay until the Fokker D.VII arrived in mid-1918. Approximately 900 D.Vs and 1,612 D.Vas were built before production ceased in April 1918. They flew on every front, from the Western Front to Palestine, and served until the Armistice. It was Germany’s most numerous fighter of late 1917—and its most frustrating.