A replica Fokker D.VII with a documented lineage spanning two World Wars, a Hollywood production, a landing accident, and more than half a century of dormancy returned to the air in 2025, making its public appearance at the Stampe Fly-in held at Antwerp International Airport (EBAW) in Belgium. Registered N903AC, the aircraft is one of three flying replicas constructed in 1965 for the John Guillermin film *The Blue Max*, which dramatized aerial combat on the Western Front. Following a landing accident in the late 1960s or early 1970s, the aircraft remained unairworthy for roughly five decades before a restoration effort brought it back to flying condition — a timeline that underscores both the patience demanded by serious warbird work and the increasingly sophisticated community of technicians willing to undertake it.
The aircraft's current livery pays deliberate historical tribute to O-BOBE, a genuine Fokker D.VII that occupies a notable place in Belgian civil aviation history. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was required to surrender 324 Fokker D.VIIs to Belgium as war reparations — the D.VII being the only aircraft type explicitly named in the armistice terms, a reflection of how thoroughly it had dominated the Western Front in the war's final months. O-BOBE was among those surrendered aircraft and was subsequently acquired as surplus by Jean Stampe and Maurice Vertongen for their École d'Aviation d'Anvers, the Antwerp Aviation School, where it was modified into a two-seat configuration for instructional use. Its civil registration was valid from April 30, 1923 through February 19, 1926 — a three-year window in which a front-line fighter became a peacetime trainer.
The provenance of that original aircraft connects directly to the fly-in's name. Jean Stampe went on to co-found Stampe et Vertongen, the Belgian manufacturer whose SV.4 biplane trainer became one of the most celebrated aerobatic and instructional aircraft of the interwar period and remains actively flown in the vintage community today. Hosting the Stampe Fly-in at Antwerp is therefore not incidental — it grounds the event in a specific lineage of Belgian aviation instruction and manufacturing that traces a direct institutional line from the post-WWI surplus market through to mid-century pilot training practices that influenced European general aviation for generations.
For professional pilots and aviation operators, the return of N903AC to airworthiness after more than fifty years illustrates the sustained investment now flowing into the preservation of early aviation artifacts. Warbird restoration has matured considerably beyond individual hobbyist projects; organizations and well-capitalized collectors are funding long-cycle restoration efforts on aircraft that would have previously been considered total losses. The operational reappearance of a film-production replica — itself a historically informed reconstruction rather than an original — at an airport that handles commercial and business traffic reflects a growing pattern in European aviation culture where heritage events at active airports serve both commemorative and community functions, reinforcing institutional memory of how deeply commercial and military aviation are historically intertwined.