The Belgians took the bulk of the earliest production of this airplane in 1916 and realized that they had to manage with those unwanted airplane models rejected by their allies. Under Belgian hands it proved to be highly successful and it remained as the standard Belgian fighter until the end of the war.
The most successful Belgian HD.1 pilot was Willy Coppens who fitted his airplane with an experimental 11mm Vickers Machine gun to perform better at ballon busting duties, something where he excelled. In fact most of his victories were ballons and most of them were taken down while piloting a HD.1.
Also, regarding the 9th squadron, we could only find one of them not flown by Willy Coppens.
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