Fokker F.VII

The Fokker F.VII, also known as the Fokker Trimotor, was an airliner produced in the 1920s by the Dutch aircraft manufacturer Fokker, Fokker's American subsidiary Atlantic Aircraft Corporation, and several other companies under license. It was an airliner that could carry 6-12 people, depending on the version, and it used a variety of engines and engine configurations; while the first versions had a single nose engine, most were produced with three engines.

The F.VII was an important airliner in the 1920s and 1930s; made in several versions, it was used for record breaking flights. An enlarged variant of the F.VII, the F-10, was involved in a famous aviation accident in 1931, leading to safety reforms in the USA. It was also used for an attempt to reach the North Pole, although there was a debate if it did reach all the way there: the aircraft was at least flown in arctic conditions in this attempt. Less controversially, it was flown in the first flight across the Pacific from Australia to the United States, and earlier it was used in flight from the United States to Hawaii.

In the 1930s, the aircraft began to fall out of favor as newer designs that were larger, faster, and more streamlined entered service. Some major variations on this design included the Fokker F-10, which was bigger and could carry four additional passengers, and the Fokker F.VIII, which omitted the central engine thus becoming a twin-engined aircraft. The Fokker F.VII was also produced by licensees outside the Netherlands including SABCA, Avia, Avro, and others.

The F.VII was designed as a single-engined transport aircraft by Walter Rethel. Five examples of this model were built for the Dutch airline KLM. One of these aircraft, registered H-NACC, was used in 1924 for the first flight from the Netherlands to the Dutch East Indies. In 1925, while living in the US, Anthony Fokker heard of the inaugural Ford Reliability Tour, which was proposed as a competition for transport aircraft. Fokker had the company's head designer, Reinhold Platz, convert a single-engine F.VIIA airliner to a trimotor configuration, powered by 200 hp (150 kW) Wright Whirlwind radial engines. The resulting aircraft was designated the Fokker F.VIIA-3m. Following shipment to the US, it won the Ford Reliability Tour in late 1925. The Trimotor's structure consisted of a fabric-covered steel-tube fuselage and a plywood-skinned wooden wing.

The Fokker F.VIIB-3m had a slightly increased wing area over the F.VIIA-3m, with power increased to 220 hp (160 kW) per engine, while the F.10 was slightly enlarged, carrying 12 passengers in an enclosed cabin. The aircraft became popularly known as the Fokker Trimotor.

The Fokker F.VIII (F.8) was similar, but a twin engine configuration rather than a trimotor, and it was bigger. The Fokker F.IX (F-9) had a similar configuration to the F.VII, but it was quite a bit larger and carried 20 passengers.

The eight- to 12-passenger Fokker was the aircraft of choice for many early airlines, both in Europe and the Americas, and it dominated the American market in the late 1920s. However, the popularity of the Fokker quickly waned after the 1931 crash of a Transcontinental & Western Air Fokker F.10, which resulted in the death of Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne. The investigation revealed problems with the Fokker's plywood-laminate construction, resulting in a temporary ban from commercial flights, more stringent maintenance requirements, and a shift to all-metal aircraft such as the similar Ford Trimotor and later Boeing 247 and Douglas DC-2.

The F.VII was used by many explorers and aviation pioneers, including: