Fokker E.I

The Fokker E.I was a German single-seat monoplane fighter of World War I and the first fighter aircraft to enter service with the Fliegertruppe of the Deutsches Heer. It was essentially an armed version of the Fokker M.5K reconnaissance aircraft, which was itself closely based on the French Morane-Saulnier Type H, fitted with Fokker's synchronizer gear so that a single 7.92 mm machine gun could fire through the spinning propeller. Its fuselage used welded chromium-molybdenum steel tubing, a construction method that stayed the basis of Fokker fuselages for many years. Its arrival at the front in mid-1915 opened the period of German air superiority known as the Fokker Scourge, and it was soon followed by the E.II, E.III and E.IV.