When Royal Naval Air Service Sopwith Triplanes appeared over the Western Front in April 1917, they out-climbed and out-manoeuvred every German scout in the sky. Anthony Fokker, visiting Jasta 11 that same month, saw the threat and returned to Schwerin with a brief to his chief designer, Reinhold Platz: build a triplane. Platz, who had never examined the Sopwith, produced an entirely original design. The prototype V.4 flew on 5 July 1917; after modifications it emerged as the Dr.I, a tiny, rotary-powered machine with steel-tube fuselage, horn-balanced ailerons, and a top wing of cantilevered plywood box-spar construction. The first two pre-production machines, designated F.I, reached the front in late August 1917. Manfred von Richthofen took up F.I 102/17 on 1 September and never looked back. The triplane’s rate of climb was extraordinary, its manoeuvrability almost unrivalled, and its twin synchronised Spandaus gave it a lethal punch. Yet the upper wing was prone to failure. In late October 1917 pilots Heinrich Gontermann and Pastor were killed when their top wings stripped away in flight. The entire type was grounded until Fokker strengthened the rib structures and spar attachment. Production resumed, but only 320 Dr.Is had been built by May 1918. Richthofen scored nineteen of his final victories in the triplane and was killed flying one on 21 April 1918. It was a magnificent fighting machine, but it was also a fragile one—fast in a climb, slow in a dive, and always suspicious of its own wings.