There are two excellent front and rear photos of the Pfalz D.XII prototype on pages 168 and 169 of Aeronaut Publishing book Pfalz Aircraft of WWI. Same photos, but smaller in older edition printed by Flying Machines Press. Both this book and Thetford and Gray state that a Pfalz D.IIIa fuselage was used to create the prototype. However the fuselage looks too deep, especially the rear, to be a D.IIIa fuselage. It appears to be a standard production shaped D.XII fuselage with a similar nose to a D.IIIa. The Pfalz factory was originally going to use an airfoil radiator but changed to a frontal radiator for production D.XII's. The side radiators seen in the photos were just a quick fix to get the prototype in the air. Even though the nose is similar to the D.IIIa, I do not think a D.IIIa nose was grafted onto a D.XII fuselage. Wood and relatively soft aluminum is easy enough to fabricate a one off. So D.IIIa fuselage or D.XII fuselage on prototype??
