Fokker F.V

The Fokker F.V was a Dutch airliner created by Fokker in the 1920s and designed by Reinhold Platz, whose most unusual property was that it could be flown as a biplane or a monoplane because the lower wing could be removed. The idea was that the biplane form would lift greater loads with its larger wing area while the monoplane would have less drag and be faster. The upper wing was a typical thick, internally braced Fokker wing mounted as a parasol wing on four struts each side, and the conversion to a biplane used simple N-type struts without bracing wires. In place of the fabric covered tube fuselage of earlier Fokkers it had a flat, deep-sided fuselage skinned in two layers of triple-ply plywood for stiffness. A 268 kW Rolls-Royce Eagle water-cooled in-line engine drove two two-bladed propellers mounted at right angles on one shaft, which acted as a four-bladed propeller with a smaller diameter. The cabin had dual controls, toilet and wash facilities and heating, but the F.V was not a success and only one was built.