Fokker D.XIII

The Fokker D.XIII was a fighter produced in the Netherlands in the mid-1920s as a development of the Fokker D.XI, with a new Napier Lion XI engine of 425 kW and considerably refined aerodynamics. It had been designed to meet the needs of the clandestine flying school that the German Army ran at Lipetsk in the Soviet Union, and like its predecessor it was a conventional single-bay sesquiplane with staggered wings braced by V-struts, an open cockpit and a fixed tailskid undercarriage, with plywood skinned wooden wings and a welded steel-tube fuselage covered in fabric. On 16 July 1925 an early production example set four world airspeed records with 250 kg and 500 kg payloads. Under a fictitious order from Argentina the German Army bought 50 aircraft and shipped them to Lipetsk, where they equipped the school until 1933, when the 30 survivors were handed to the Soviet Air Force.