11/30/2010. Remarks by Johan Visschedijk: "Designed to meet a Netherlands Army Air Service requirement for a successor to the WWI-vintage D.VII, the D.XVI single-seat unequal-span biplane was powered by a 525 hp Armstrong Siddeley Jaguar VIIA fourteen-cylinder air-cooled radial and flew for the first time on July 8, 1929. Possessing a fabric covered, welded, steel tube fuselage and ply-and-fabric covered wooden wings, it was armed with two synchronized 0.312 in (7.92 mm) machine guns.
The D.XVI was ordered by the NethAAS, in total 24 aircraft were built, seventeen of them serving with the NethAAS , these having split-axle landing gears rather than the cross-axle type of the prototype. One D.XVI was subsequently re-engined with a Bristol Mercury radial for aerobatic display purposes.
A single example was supplied to China, and four powered by the Gnome & Rhône Jupiter were delivered to Hungary. A further D.XVI was built with a Curtiss V-1570 Conqueror twelve-cylinder liquid-cooled engine to meet a KNIL (Koninklijk Nederlands Indisch Leger, Royal Netherlands-Indies Army) requirement. First flown on August 20, 1930, the aircraft fell down while performing a tail-spin test during a test flight on March 20, 1931. No production order was placed for this version.
