Fokker B.I (1922)

The Fokker B.I was a reconnaissance flying boat built in the Netherlands in 1922, a conventional biplane flying boat with staggered sesquiplane wings braced by struts arranged as a Warren truss and a single engine mounted pusher-wise on the top wing. Its duralumin hull had three open cockpits, one in the nose for a gunner, one in front of the lower wing for the pilot and engineer and one behind the wings for a second gunner, and it was amphibious, with a main undercarriage that folded back along the hull. The Dutch Naval Air Service flew the B.I in the Dutch East Indies for a number of years and it gave good service, yet no further examples were ordered from Fokker. An improved B.III followed in 1926, which dropped the amphibious feature and, failing to sell to the Navy, was fitted with a passenger cabin as the B.IIIC before being bought by Harold Vanderbilt.