Known by various nicknames, including the "Clutching hand" and "Skyhook", many survived to be used as a civil light aircraft in the postwar era.

Even the fin and rudder, on the prototype of the usual curved de Havilland outline, were cut square on production machines.

The fuselage structure was a straight box with no attempt at refinement of outline – instructor and pupil sat in tandem on basketwork seats in a single cockpit, spartan even by the standards of the time.

RFC instructors at the time referred to student pilots as "Huns" (the term normally applied to German airmen) and casualties at training schools were high.

[3][6] As a result, the DH.6 had very gentle flying characteristics and was probably the most "forgiving" aircraft of its time, allowing itself to be flown "crab wise" in improperly banked turns and able to maintain sustained flight at speeds as low as 30 miles per hour (48 km/h).

Besides Airco, batches were built by Grahame-White, Kingsbury Aviation, Harland and Wolff, Morgan, Savages, Ransomes, Sims & Jefferies, and Gloucestershire.

A single DH.6 was constructed in July 1917 by Canadian Aeroplanes Ltd. as a prototype for projected production, should supply of the Curtiss JN-4 (Can) prove inadequate, and it was the first British-designed aircraft built in Canada.

The School of Special Flying at Gosport in Hampshire was established by Maj. Robert R. Smith-Barry with the aim of making flight instructors into specially trained experts – rather than entrusting the role to novices who had barely completed their own training,[9] and operational pilots being "rested" to recover from combat fatigue.

[12] Many RFC/RAF aircraft of this period received nicknames (some of which, like the "zoo" names of Sopwith types, reached semi-official status), and the DH.6 has a variety of humorous but disrespectful epithets.

Some 60 aircraft were licence-built in Spain from 1921 onwards with Hispano-Suiza 8 engines, refined fuselages that included separate cockpits, and rounded "de Havilland style" rudder/fin assemblies.