Fokker F.II

The Fokker F.II was the first of a long series of commercial aircraft from Fokker, flying in 1919. In a biplane age it was a clean high-wing monoplane that sold across Europe and North America during the early development of passenger flying. It was a single-engined cantilever monoplane with a design lineage back to Reinhold Platz's Dr.I triplane, with a plywood-skinned wooden wing, a welded steel tube fuselage covered in fabric, no vertical fin and a fixed cross-axle undercarriage, and it carried four passengers in an enclosed cabin and a fifth beside the pilot. The prototype, designated V.45, was built at Schwerin in Germany and first flew there in October 1919, then was illegally flown across the border to the Netherlands on 20 March 1920 when Fokker relocated. Fokker's own aircraft had a 138 kW BMW IIIa engine, which KLM replaced with the Armstrong Siddeley Puma. KLM flew two from 1920 to 1927, and Deutsche Aero Lloyd built at least 20 under licence as the Fokker-Grulich F.II.