Talk:Idflieg aircraft designation system

Re-written (but still unreferenced) version.
This was very bad and riddled with misleading "information" - I have re-written it - although I did not have time, at least for the moment, to add suitable references. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 02:07, 6 August 2009 (UTC)

This article is still full of errors, and should be taken as a vauge description of what happened. I have noticed this before in SoundofMusicals articles. The author seems to like to exapand on history with their own theories, some of which are fundemetally wrong. For example, an A-type is only an un-armed monoplane, the number of seating is irrelevant (Taube A types had two seats, and Pfalz A types had one, but both were un-armed monoplanes). A B-type, is an unarmed biplane - nothing more. The low power mentioned, was the only power sources avalible at the time, and not part of the designation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.244.72.4 (talk) 12:08, 31 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Actually, this is what the article has said for years, if you actually read it! --Soundofmusicals (talk) 21:47, 21 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Actually, I have not only made the point made by the IP even clearer, but also added a lot of references and cleared up some other matters as well - added an illustration, and split it into sections. If I am going to be accused of "authoring" this article I might as well re-write it properly! --Soundofmusicals (talk) 22:01, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

"Snippets" of information on particular classes
The trouble with details like these is that they are getting away from the specific subject of the article - which is the system itself. There is a great deal more that could be said about individual members of the different "classes", but when we had said all that the article would be a general article about WWI German aeroplanes. This article may well need refining for accuracy, more references etc. but it really DOESN'T need to be very much longer. Ever. Hope you can see the point. Best regards (really!!) --Soundofmusicals (talk) 12:18, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Further "clean up"
The original article undoubtedly overdid the word "designation". Reducing its use, which does improve the quality of the prose, requires a certain flexibility - "designation" for instance is not quite synonymous with "name". The little bit about how the system actually worked needs to be nearer the top than it was - I have put it in the lede - an alternative might be to give it its own section? --Soundofmusicals (talk) 14:39, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Prototype aircraft.
Official Idflieg designations were not applied to prototypes, but only to aircraft officially ordered for service use - the "Fokker F.I" is evidently rather anomalous - but either "F.I" was not an official type number, or the aircraft concerned were not, strictly speaking, "prototypes". Not a question we can resolve here without speculation - no choice but to echo our sources. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 03:37, 29 September 2018 (UTC)