SPAD S.VII - First entry, foreign users vol. 1

We start this series of entries with another heavyweight of the Great War: The SPAD S.VII

The SPAD S.VII was the first of a successful saga of French biplane fighters. It was designed by Louis Béchereau and was produced by the Société Pour L'Aviation et ses Dérivés (SPAD) (Society for aviations and it's derivatives). It was renowned for being a sturdy and hard to destroy airplane with good climbing and diving characteristics. It was also good as a gun platform although apparently it was too heavy and less maneouvrable than the contemporaneous Nieuport fighters. Many famous WW1 aces like Guynemer, Baracca or Pentland flew it.

As it was widely used both in the Great war and in the aftermaths it suffered many small field modifications, being the most notorious one the inclusion of skis by the Russian DUX factory.

This entry covers the usage by the next countries:

• Argentina: Bought two aircraft for evaluation purposes.
• Belgium: Widely used by their national aviation corps (Aviation Militaire) during World War I and the post-war period. Most precisely it was used by the 5éme and 10éme escadrilles (5th and 10th squadrons).
• Brazil: Used by their national military aviation service (Serviço de Aviação Militar) in 1920.
• Chile: Another evaluation-only user. The colours are speculative as we couldn't find any photographic or visual evidence.
• Czechoslovakia: One of the main post-war users. It constituted the backbone of the very early Czechoslovak Army Air Force (Československé Letectvo) and some of them were employed during the brief Polish-Czechoslovak war of 1919.
• Estonia: It's been said that some captured ex-Russian airplanes were among the first airplanes that formed the Estonian aviation regiment in the aftermath of the Great War. Just like Chile we couldn't find any supporting evidence and therefore the colours are speculative
• Finland: Finland used DUX-built airplanes in both versions, with skis and without them. However they didn't see action during the Finnish civil war of 1918, as far as we know.
• Imperial Germany: Germany captured various airplanes during 1917, mostly from the French SPA 31 unit and SPA 65. Most of the SPA 31 retained the unit insignia when flying with their new German-owners.