Albatros’ chief designer Robert Thelen built the D.I and D.II in mid-1916 around two ideas: a streamlined plywood fuselage and twin synchronised guns. They were fast and hit hard, but they were out-turned by the nimble Nieuports.

For the D.III, Albatros kept the fuselage and the Mercedes engine but redesigned the wings, adopting the French sesquiplane layout — a full-chord upper wing and a narrow single-spar lower wing joined by V-struts — to sharpen manoeuvrability. The result reached the Jagdstaffeln from December 1916 and became the standard German fighter of early 1917.

Where rival scouts were fabric stretched over a wire-braced wooden box, the Albatros used a semi-monocoque shell — thin plywood skins wrapped and glued over a series of formers to make a smooth, load-bearing oval. It was stiffer, cleaner aerodynamically, needed less internal bracing and gave the D.III its distinctive elegant shape.

The nose held the water-cooled Mercedes; early machines used a nose radiator, later ones a wing-mounted Teves & Braun unit offset to starboard. The construction was labour-intensive, but it produced one of the best-looking and most rigid fuselages of the war — a real advantage in speed and dive strength (whatever the lower wing did).

The D.III carried two 7.92 mm lMG 08/15 “Spandau” machine guns — lightened aircraft Maxims — synchronised to fire through the propeller arc. Twin guns were still comparatively new in early 1917; many Allied scouts carried only one. Belt-fed, they delivered a heavy, sustained volume of fire.

Power came from the six-cylinder inline water-cooled Mercedes D.IIIa of roughly 160–170 hp — reliable and torquey, well suited to the heavier Albatros. It gave a solid rate of climb and, importantly for 1917, a strong showing at altitude, where the Jagdstaffeln liked to fight.

This is the caveat every honest account must include. The narrow, single-spar lower wing copied from the Nieuport saved weight and improved both the view and the turn — but it lacked torsional rigidity. Under the loads of a prolonged or high-speed dive it could flutter and twist, and the leading edge or spar could crack or break away.

Several pilots experienced it, von Richthofen among them, whose lower wing cracked in flight in early 1917; the Jagdstaffeln were warned not to hold steep dives. Albatros added a strut and reinforcement but never entirely cured it — and the same weakness carried into the D.V. Austria-Hungary’s Oeffag-built machines, with a strengthened wing structure, largely solved the problem.

Under licence, the Oesterreichische Flugzeugfabrik AG (Oeffag) at Wiener-Neustadt built the D.III for the Austro-Hungarian k.u.k. Luftfahrtruppen — and improved it. Oeffag strengthened the lower-wing attachment, fitted more powerful Austro-Daimler engines (185 hp in the series 153, up to 225 hp in the series 253) and, after tests showed the propeller spinner could detach, deleted it for a neat rounded nose that actually improved performance.

Many historians regard the Oeffag machines as the best of the D.III family. Godwin Brumowski, Austria-Hungary’s top ace, flew one. A genuine Oeffag D.III survives today in the Polish Aviation Museum in Kraków — one of the very few original Albatros D.IIIs left in the world.

Per-aircraft procurement prices for German fighters of 1917 were not reliably recorded in a way that converts into a meaningful modern figure, and wartime Reichsmark costs vary between sources — so any single “price” for a D.III should be treated with caution and is best flagged as an estimate.

What can be said with more confidence is the cost of flying one today. Operating an airworthy Albatros reproduction — hand-built, with a vintage or replica inline engine — is broadly comparable to other WWI reproductions, commonly estimated in the low thousands of dollars per flying hour once maintenance, insurance and fuel are counted. Treat that as indicative, not a quotation.