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The Albatros D.IV was an unsuccessful entry in the series of Albatros biplane fighters that dominated over the Western Front during 1917, and was doomed by the failure of its engine.
The Albatros biplane fighters had been developed to help overcome the British D.H.2 and French Nieuport scouts, which had defeated the Fokker monoplanes. The Albatros D.I was a biplane with equal chord and almost equal span wings, and a semi-monocoque fuselage with a rounded nose and flat sides further back. The D.II saw the upper wing lowered to improve visibility. The D.III had new wings, with a small chord on the lower wing (distance from front to back) and raked wing tips, and suffered from a series of wing failures.
The D.IV used the equal chord wings of the D.I and D.II. It had a new fuselage, with an oval cross section all the way along its length. It was powered by a geared Mercedes engine which provided the same 160hp at the engine used in the earlier machines, but that could be entirely enclosed within the nose of the aircraft. This was an experimental design and suffered from a series of problems that eventually caused the cancellation of the D.IV. Albatros then moved on to the D.V, which used the same fuselage as the D.IV but with the wing structure of the D.III.