Fokker F.XX

The Fokker F.XX was a 1930s Dutch three-engined airliner, the first Fokker design to use an elliptical-section fuselage in place of the traditional square one and the first Fokker aircraft with retractable landing gear. It was a high-wing thick-section cantilever monoplane with a retractable tailwheel gear whose main units folded into the engine nacelles, powered by three Wright Cyclone radials, one in the nose and one under each wing. The only aircraft, PH-AIZ named Zilvermeeuw, first flew in 1933 and served KLM between Amsterdam, London and Berlin, but the twin-engined Douglas DC-2 and DC-3 soon made it obsolete. It was then sold to the French airline Air Tropique and used by the Spanish Republican government for a liaison service between Madrid and Paris, later with LAPE, and crashed near Barcelona on 15 February 1938. Licence production in the UK as the Airspeed AS.21 was not proceeded with.