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WEIRD! On November 9, 1918, two days before the Armistice at a tiny American airstrip near Verdun, three U.S. pilots sat playing cards. Suddenly they heard a sputtering engine and watched in amazement as a German Fokker D-VII drops out of the low gray clouds and lands. The three American airmen there, Capt. Alex H. McLanahan, Lt. Edward P. Curtis, and Lt. Sumner Sewall, rushed out with pistols drawn and captured the German pilot, Lt. Heinz von Beaulieu-Marconnay, before he could burn the airplane. Lt. Heinz claimed that he was suffering engine trouble and had landed by mistake. The mood of the captured pilot seemed one of hopelessness about the war, possibly because his brother, a German ace, had died of wounds only a few days earlier. Oliver had been in Dragoon Regiment 4 and had "4-D" marked on his aircraft. Heinz had ridden with Ulan Regiment 10 and had "U10" on the side of the now captured Fokker DVII. The Fokker had been manufactured a few months earlier in the Albatros plant at Schneidemuhl. The Americans invited the German pilot in for a collegial shot of cognac before sending him off to be processed as a prisoner. After the war Heinz became an important figure in the Luftwaffe but was captured again in WW-II. Unfortunately this time it was by the Soviets and Heinz died in a Russian concentration camp. As for the aircraft, the "kicking mule' insignia of the U.S. 95th Aero Squadron was painted on the aircraft after its capture. The Fokker D-VII was eventually boxed up and sent to America. And now resides in the Smithsonian Institution. In the 1970s the museum restored it to its 1918 condition - including the marking "U-10" painted on the side. Model of Fokker DVII in which the Ace was mortally wounded. Oliver and his D.VII. Brother Heinz's restored Fokker D. VII now at the Smithsonian Museum!!!