After the war, the Dutch armed forces were in desperate need for new aircraft. There
was a design made by the 'N.V. Nederlandsche Automobielfabriek Trompenburg',
a Dutch car manufacturer, the V.3. This was a biplane with a 130hp Clerget
rotary engine, of which 78 were ordered. But, Trompenburg had problems
with building the aircraft, and the design was already obsolete when the
prototype flew in the summer of 1919. At the same time, Fokker was returning
to Holland, bringing along hundreds of modern aircraft. Among these were
a lot of D.VII's. He heard from the problems with Trompenburg, and came
in contact with Henri Wijnmalen, the manager of Trompenburg. They agreed
that Fokker would deliver D.VII's in place of the V.3's. After all, 20
were delivered to the LVA, 20 to the MLD (Marine Luchtvaart
Dienst, Navy Air Service), and six to the LA-KNIL (Luchtvaart
Afdeling van het Koninklijk Nederlands Indisch
Leger, Army Air Service of the Dutch East Indies, nowadays Indonesia).
Besides the military ones, there also have been some civilian D.VII's in The Netherlands.