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ACES AND FIGHTER OF WORLD WAR 1 Collection of postcards. the copyright is present only on the pictures online and not on original Fokker E-III Although inspired by the French-made Morane Saulnier, the Fokker E. (Eindecker) can be considered the prototype for all future fighter planes. A single-seater mono-plane, with a weapon fixed to the fuselage and aligned with the pilot’s line of vision (see photograph) and synchronised with the rotation of the propeller blades in order to shoot without hitting them, this German fighter plane appeared at the front towards mid-1915 and was flown by aces such as Immelmann, Boelke and Udet, destroying many Allied planes that until then had enjoyed clear air supremacy. In August that same year, during an attack on Saarbrücken, a formation of French bombers lost nine planes, all shot down by Fokkers. The plane in the large photograph is a Fokker E. III serial number 419/15 that belonged to a Kampfeinsitzerkommando on the Western Front, while other images show Lieutenant Max Immelmann in front of his Fokker with no engine and no machine gun, deleted by military censorship. In the other photograph he is in the same plane and one can see the 7.92 mm LMG 08/15 7.92 and the Iron Cross First Class he was decorated with in the presence of Emperor William II. Immelmann, who had shot down 15 enemy planes, was probably shot down by his own machine gun due to a problem with the synchronisation system that disintegrated the propeller blades.