After Hanriot military prototypes failed to win orders at the Concours Militaire in late 1911 he sold his aircraft interests to another of his designers, Louis Alfred Ponnier [fr].

[3] His designs reflected Nieuport practice, particularly with the replacement of Hanriot's graceful boat-like shell fuselages with flat sided, deep chested ones.

An oil deflecting cowling, open at the bottom, surrounded the powerful double row, fourteen cylinder Gnome Lambda-Lambda rotary engine, which delivered 160 hp (119 kW) to a 2 m diameter propeller.

The D.III had a fixed, conventional undercarriage with mainwheels on a single axle mounted to the fuselage by pairs of wire cross-braced V-struts, plus a simple elliptical leaf spring tailskid.

[4] Jane's All the World's Aircraft 1913 describes a longer (6.65 m (21 ft 10 in)) Hanriot D.III with a 100 hp (75 kW) Gnome engine; this motor does not appear in other cited contemporary accounts.