It became famous as the aircraft in which Manfred von Richthofen gained his last 17 victories (plus two earlier ones in the Fokker F.I prototype in September 1917), and in which he was killed on 21 April 1918.

The Fokker Dr.I was flown with great success by many German aces, most notably Josef Jacobs with 30 confirmed kills in the type.

[3] Despite its single Vickers machine gun armament, the Sopwith swiftly proved itself superior to the more heavily armed Albatros fighters then in use by the Luftstreitkräfte.

Upon his return to the Schwerin factory, Fokker instructed Reinhold Platz to build a triplane, but gave him no further information about the Sopwith design.

[6] Platz responded with the V.4, a small, rotary-powered triplane with a steel tube fuselage and thick cantilever wings,[7] first developed during Fokker's government-mandated collaboration with Hugo Junkers.

Initial tests revealed that the V.4 had unacceptably high control forces resulting from the use of unbalanced ailerons and elevators.

The primary distinguishing feature was the addition of wingtip skids, which proved necessary because the aircraft was tricky to land and prone to ground looping.

[16] Vizefeldwebel Franz Hemer of Jasta 6 said, "The triplane was my favorite fighting machine because it had such wonderful flying qualities.

While initial rate of climb was excellent, performance fell off dramatically at higher altitudes because of the low compression of the Oberursel Ur.II, a clone of the Le Rhône 9J rotary engine.

[18] As the war continued, chronic shortages of castor oil made rotary operation increasingly difficult.

[22] On 29 October 1917, Leutnant der Reserve Heinrich Gontermann, Staffelführer of Jasta 15, was performing aerobatics when his triplane broke up.

Leutnant der Reserve Günther Pastor of Jasta 11 was killed two days later when his triplane broke up in level flight.

Idflieg convened a Sturzkommission (crash commission) which concluded that poor construction and lack of waterproofing had allowed moisture to damage the wing structure.

[24] In response to the crash investigation, Fokker was forced to improve quality control on the production line, particularly varnishing of the wing spars and ribs, to combat moisture.

On 3 February 1918, Leutnant Hans Joachim Wolff of Jasta 11 successfully landed after suffering a failure of the upper wing leading edge and ribs.

[29] On 18 March 1918, Lothar von Richthofen, Staffelführer of Jasta 11, suffered a failure of the upper wing leading edge during combat with Sopwith Camels of No.

[34] At the time of the Armistice, many remaining triplanes were assigned to fighter training schools at Nivelles, Belgium, and Valenciennes, France.

Serial 528/17 was retained as a testbed by the Deutschen Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt (German Aviation Research Institute) at Adlershof.

Bitz Flugzeugbau GmbH built two Dr.I replicas, serial numbers 001 and 002, for use in Twentieth Century Fox’s 1966 film The Blue Max.