Thanks Michal & Jelger!

The busted tire is a Roden kit item with the center ground out and given a bit of heat over a candle - repeatedly. Then mashed flat with the metal top of a set of tweezers.

Was it visited by souvenir hunters?

Greetings fair Jessica,

The story line for this aircraft was that it represents one of the machines that was purposely damaged by its German pilot on landing at Nivelles during the end of war collection of German aircraft. Certainly its pilot or the souvenir hunters did carve off the personal markings.

Now the British / allies were interested in any of the Fokker D.VII types by the terms of the Armistice. But it was the newer machines with the BMW they really wanted. So the damage of an older machine with a Mercedes (old or rebuilt) was not a terrible lose. The older machines were seen to have a very limited life span left.

The story of this set of markings is meant to be a bit of a question. So many instances were not specifically recorded but simply listed under daily operations for the collection fields as arrivals, loses, and dispositions. Dispositions could be salvage, distributed to BEF units or distributed to "others".

Due to the British being familiar with Benzine and the high altitude carburetors they lost very few pilots post war in flying accidents. Not so with the pilots of the AEF.