Anthony Fokker was Dutch, born in the colonial East Indies. In 1910, at age 20, he moved to Germany to pursue his interest in aviation. He soon founded his own airplane company there, and during World War I it designed a number of successful and famous fighter planes for the Germans. Fokker himself was an accomplished pilot. I wrote a previous article on the Fokker Dr.I triplane, which you can check out here.

• READ MORE: Recreating the Final Flight of the Red Baron

After losing WWI, Germany had to surrender all its warplanes and aircraft factories, including Fokker’s factory, under the Treaty of Versailles. Fokker, however, was able to bribe railway and border officials to smuggle some of his equipment back to his native Netherlands. That equipment allowed him to reestablish his company in Holland and design the Fokker F.VII, a single-engine transport for the fledgling postwar civilian market. I’m in one of those models here, in KLM colors, at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport (EHAM).

The F.VII’s fuselage was fabric stretched over a steel-tube frame. Its wings were plywood-skinned. The original, single-engine version of the F.VII was powered by a variety of different models of radial engines, which ranged from 360 to 480 hp. Inside there was room for eight passengers, as well as a bathroom (the door to my right here).

The cabin was connected to the two-man cockpit by a little door under the fuel tank and starter switches. On the instrument panel, from left to right: oil pressure and temperature, altitude, another oil temperature gauge, air speed indicator (with a turn indicator below it), clock, and rpm tachometer. Around the cockpit you can see all the wires and pulleys connecting the controls to the flight surfaces outside. Turn or push the yoke and they quite clearly move. Fly by wire, indeed. The compass is basically a bowl with a magnet floating in it.

The designer of the initial F.VII was Walter Rethel, who was later hired by Willy Messerschmitt and went on to design the famous Bf 109, the main German fighter at the start of World War II.

With a single engine, even a fairly powerful one for its time, the Fokker F.VII didn’t exactly spring off the ground. It lumbers into the air and climbs gradually. Nevertheless, in the early 1920s, the F.VII became a successful early passenger transport for early airlines such as Dutch KLM and Belgian Sabena. Here I am flying over the historic center of Amsterdam.

In 1924, the F.VII even introduced flights from Amsterdam to the East Indies. Needless to say, it wasn’t nonstop and could take many days.

In 1925, automakers Henry Ford and his son Edsel began the Ford Reliability Tour, a challenge for aircraft to successfully complete a 1,900-mile course across the American Midwest with stops in 10 cities. To compete in Ford’s challenge, and make the airplane more reliable in general, Fokker had the F.VII redesigned to have three engines, adding two mounted on the side struts. The new F.VIIb/3m, decked out here in Sabena colors and flying over Brussels, became immediately popular, with 154 built. Each of the three engines was a 200 hp Wright J-4 Whirlwind.

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Belgian tycoon Alfred Loewenstein, calculated to be the third-richest man in the world at his peak in the 1920s, even owned his own private Fokker F.VII. Flying over the English Channel in 1928, he had one of the most unfortunate bathroom breaks in history. You see, the door to the bathroom (left) is directly across from the door to the outside (right). It seems Loewenstein opened and walked through the wrong one and fell to his death in the water below. Though to this day, some still suspect it was murder. There’s even a book about this incident, The Man Who Fell from the Sky by William Norris.

If that were the sum of the F.VII’s history, it might be pretty uninspiring. But to tell the rest of it, I’m here at Spitsbergen in Norway’s Arctic archipelago of Svalbard for Byrd’s flight to the North Pole. Richard Byrd was a U.S. naval officer who commanded air patrols out of Halifax, Nova Scotia, during WWI. He played an active but supporting role in the first attempts to cross the Atlantic by air, and in 1926 had his big shot at fame. His Fokker F.VIIa/3m, mounted on snow skis, was named the Josephine Ford, after the daughter of Edsel Ford, who helped finance the expedition.

This was a two-man expedition, with Byrd accompanied by Navy Chief Aviation Pilot Floyd Bennett. The passenger seats were torn out and replaced with extra fuel tanks and emergency supplies.

The inside of the cockpit is quite similar to the one-engine version but with three separate throttles and tachometers (showing rpm). There was no airport in Svalbard at the time, so they had to take off from a snow-covered field—hence the skis. Byrd’s flight, from Svalbard and back, took 15 hours and 57 minutes, including 13 minutes spent circling at their farthest north point, which Byrd claimed, based on his sextant readings, to be the North Pole.

Did he really reach the North Pole and become the first to fly over it? This remains hotly disputed to this day, with some researchers claiming that he faked his sextant readings and fell short of his goal. In that case, the true prize would belong to Norwegian Roald Amundsen, already the first to reach the South Pole by land, in his airship Norge.

• READ MORE: The Story of the Schneider Trophy and the Supermarine S.5

A few observations about flying the Fokker F.VII, at least in the sim. First, it’s not very stable, in the sense of wanting to correct back to straight and level flight. It’s sensitive to being loaded either nose-heavy or tail-heavy and requires a lot of control input. Second, that big wing really likes to glide. To descend without overspeeding, I basically have to put all three throttles back to idle and glide down.

Last, there are no differential brakes and no tailwheel. That makes the F.VII extremely hard to control on the ground, even just to taxi. That’s especially true on snow skis.

Whether Byrd truly did reach the North Pole or not, he became a huge national hero when he returned to the U.S. Byrd and Bennett were both presented with the Medal of Honor by then-President Calvin Coolidge at the White House.

The following year in 1927, Byrd outfitted a new Fokker F.VII/3m, named America, to bid for the Orteig Prize, promising $25,000 for the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris (or vice versa). Anthony Fokker himself had recently moved to the United States and was part of the team preparing Byrd and his crew—the odds-on favorite—for the Atlantic crossing. During practices, however, America—piloted by Fokker himself—crashed, injuring both Byrd and Bennett and postponing their attempt. As a result, while America was being repaired, Charles Lindbergh—an unheard-of underdog—made the flight solo in the Spirit of St. Louis, becoming an aviation legend.

• READ MORE: Simulating a Bombing Raid in an F-16

The Fokker F.VII would still achieve fame, though, crossing a different ocean at the hands of Australian pilot Charles Kingsford Smith in 1928. If you’ve ever passed through Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport (YSSY) and wondered who it’s named after, you’re about to find out. (If you’re an Australian, you already know).

Movie star handsome Smith, known as “Smithy,” fought as a combat engineer at Gallipoli in WWI but soon joined the Royal Air Force as a pilot. He was shot down, injured, and returned to become a flying instructor in Australia. From that day, Smith had a dream to cross the Pacific Ocean by air from the U.S. to Australia. By 1928 he was ready to try to achieve that goal. That’s why I’m here at Oakland Municipal Airport (KOAK) in California, where he took off in his Fokker F.VIIb/3m Southern Cross. Not unlike Byrd’s airplane, the inside has been altered to make space for extra fuel tanks.

At 8:54 a.m. on May 31, 1928, Smith and his four-man crew lifted off from Oakland on the first leg of their journey to Hawaii. At the time, flying to Hawaii, much less Australia, was an extremely daunting prospect. While they had a radio with limited range, there were no radio beacons to guide them. They could only estimate a course based on the latest, often inaccurate, weather reports over the Pacific and hope that unexpected winds wouldn’t blow them off course and make them miss Hawaii entirely. As they flew over the Golden Gate— the bridge hadn’t been built yet—they knew that several aviators before them had estimated wrong and simply vanished into the vastness of the Pacific.

The first stage from Oakland to Hawaii covered 2,400 miles and took 27 hours and 25 minutes (87.54 mph). It was uneventful. But one can only imagine their joy as they arrived here over the northeast shore of Oahu.

They landed at Wheeler Army Airfield in the center of Oahu. The Southern Cross was the first foreign-registered airplane to arrive in Hawaii and was greeted at Wheeler by thousands, including Governor Wallace Rider Farrington. Smith and his crew were put up at Honolulu’s pink Royal Hawaiian Hotel to rest for the next stage.

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The runway at Wheeler was too short for the Southern Cross to take off fully loaded, so they flew to Barking Sands on the west coast of Kauai, where a special runway had been constructed. They took off from Barking Sands at 5:20 a.m. on June 3, bound for Suva in Fiji.

The journey from Hawaii to Fiji was 3,155 miles—the longest flight yet over continuous seas. It lasted 34 hours and 30 minutes at an average speed of 91.45 mph.

Halfway across near the equator, the Southern Cross encountered a tropical thunderstorm. Keep in mind, the crew did not have the benefit of an artificial horizon. The only way it could keep level, flying blind, was keeping a close eye on airspeed, altitude, and the inclinometer (or turn indicator). Somehow, the crew weathered the storm and kept going.

The crew undoubtedly felt great relief when it spotted the green landscape of Fiji ahead. There was no airport at that time, so the Southern Cross landed on a cricket field. Once again, it was far too small to use to take off again, so after a few days’ rest, the crew relocated to a beach from which to depart for the next and final leg of the journey. Leaving Fiji on June 9, the aviators embarked on their final 1,683-mile stretch home to Australia.

Once more they encountered storms, which blew them nearly 150 miles off course. Even when the weather was clear, the unrelenting and trackless ocean must have been overwhelming.

The Southern Cross reached the Australian coastline near Ballina, well south of its intended target, and turned north toward Brisbane. As the crew reached Brisbane, it was greeted by an aerial escort. The goal was Eagle Farm Airport northeast of the city—now the location of Brisbane’s main international airport.

The Southern Cross had flown 7,187 miles (11,566 kilometers) in 83 hours and 72 minutes. The Pacific Ocean had been conquered by the air for the very first time. A crowd of 26,000 greeted Smith and his crew when they touched down at Eagle Farm.

Smith died in 1935 at 35 when his airplane disappeared over the Indian Ocean while attempting to break the England-Australia speed record. His career was filled with both triumph and scandal, but he is still considered Australia’s great aviation hero. If you visit Brisbane’s airport, you can still see the real Southern Cross on display in a dedicated hangar.

The Fokker F.VII continued as a popular airliner into the 1930s. However, the vulnerability of its fabric-and-wood construction became apparent following a 1931 TWA crash that resulted in the death of famed University of Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne. As a result, the Fokker F.VII gave way to all-metal airliners such as the Boeing 247, Lockheed L-10 Electra, and eventually the DC-3.

One of the most popular early successors to the Fokker F.VII was the Ford Trimotor, basically an all-metal version of the F.VII. For all their sponsorship, the Fords seem to have gotten something out of it in the end. Anthony Fokker, nicknamed “The Flying Dutchman,” lived most of the rest of his life in the U.S. and died at  49 in New York in 1939 from pneumococcal meningitis.  

If you’d like to see a version of this story with more historical photos and screenshots, you can check out my original post here. This story was told utilizing the “Local Legend” Fokker F.VII add-on to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, along with liveries and scenery downloaded for free from the flightsim.to community.

The post Reaching Uncharted Corners of the Globe in a Fokker F.VII appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

“There is so much history that took place here at the airport. It was first established as an emergency landing field for Love Field in Dallas. After World War I ended in 1919, several other emergency landing fields had been established and closed, but this one remained in operation. So, there were military planes that came through here, as well as barnstormers. That is one of the unique features of this airport. Wiley Post visited here quite often because his family was just west of here, and a lot of dignitaries have come through here over the years.”

Almost the entirety of the airport’s lineage has occurred with the Wisener family at the helm, Wisner explained. She’s been in charge of the airport since 2012, at which point her husband inherited the airport from his father—who had long managed it. She provided a brief overview of what the airport is like today. 

“We must have about 18 hangar rows here and house about a hundred aircraft, although a lot of them are hangar queens, unfortunately. Of those, we have experimentals, ultralights, single engines, and we also have multi engines. We also have an Experimental Aircraft Association chapter, Chapter 1475, which we share with Wood County Airport (KJDD) that’s five miles north of here. There’s always something going on at Mineola-Wisener,” she said.

Not only are there stories shared amongst pilots who have fond memories at the airfield, there are physical mementos onfield as well. These help to serve as reminders of the airport’s past. 

“This airport is unique foremost because of its rich heritage and history. It’s a throwback to the old days,” Wisener continued. “We still have a circa-1920s beacon tower and beacon that operates at night. It is one of the original beacons that was put out by the Department of Commerce. This is probably my favorite artifact at the airport—I’m fascinated with it. We also have a museum based here. It’s called the Royal Flying Circus Aviation Museum. That museum has an original Curtiss Jenny, exhibited as it was, and it has not been restored. The cloth has worn away, so you can see all of the woodwork of the plane, and she’s in great shape at 105 years old!” 

Pilots can see this aircraft as well as a Stearman biplane and other odes to the golden age of aviation by appointment during weekday business hours. 

Even with a lengthy track record of successful year-over-year operations, it’s no small task to keep an airport operational for generations. This is especially true when considering the strong headwinds that privately owned airports face in the 21st century.

“And, of course, the costs of managing the airport are horrific. The Covid-19 pandemic and its aftereffects, with the way the economy is, it has been very difficult to find consistent people to work,” Wisener said. “The costs overall have also all gone up and are astronomical, so it’s a really tough time for us. It’s something else. In Texas, there are some provisions that help with property taxes though, so we are going to look into that. But with the real estate boom around here, it’s boosting values quite a bit.”

Even with these headwinds, Wisener is extremely optimistic for the airport’s future. Its current popularity amongst pilots in Texas and beyond is just one indicator of the years to come. 

“We are going to invest in redoing the runway with asphalt, which the cost of has been high,” she said. “That’s been one of our issues, and that’s something that we are working through how to do. We have that planned for the near future and are exploring methods to obtain financing so that we can complete that project. Of course, the grass runway is alright; we just need to keep mowing it! But the price of gas has doubled, even though the refinery is only 20 miles away in Tyler. That, too, has been an interesting aspect of managing the airport recently.” 

Wisener referenced the family’s resiliency and doggedness as reasons why the property will long be an airport. “For the next 100 years of the airport’s future, we will see how expenses, property taxes, and other factors affect us. But we are going to keep going as long as we can, and I expect that someone in the Wisener family will continue running the airport,” she said. “My husband’s only son plans to continue operating the airport, so it will keep going.” 

The post Looking Back, Looking Ahead: Mineola-Wisener Field Airport appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

One of my learners made this remark after landing at Jefferson County International Airport (0S9) in Washington. The hangar is a weather-beaten metal structure with lines of square windows at the roofline. You half expect to see the doors being pushed open by men wearing coveralls and newsboy caps so that an open cockpit biplane occupied by a pilot wearing a leather helmet can be pushed onto the ramp.

That’s probably happened, says Lee Corbin, a Seattle-area retired military and commercial pilot and local historian. According to Corbin, the metal hangar at Jefferson County dates back to World War I. It was a pre-fabricated steel and sheet metal hangar known as a United States All-Steel Hangar, built by the Carnegie Illinois Steel Company.

“This particular hangar was originally built at Rockwell Field down at San Diego. With the opening of Seattle’s first airfield at Sand Point on Lake Washington, the Army decided they would send a small detachment of aircraft to have a presence in the Pacific Northwest,” says Corbin. “The hangar was disassembled then shipped north to Sand Point in 1922.”

Sand Point evolved into Sand Point Naval Air Station. The base was used for training and support through World War II, the Korean conflict, the Cuban Missile crisis, and Vietnam. The proximity of the base to the populated bedroom communities for Seattle resulted in the base closure in 1970. Much of the property was repurposed. Today the property known as the Sand Point Naval Air Station landmark district occupies 89 acres. Several of the original buildings are still intact but the open areas that once were runways have become trails and athletic fields. Most of today’s visitors don’t realize that a great deal of Seattle’s aviation history happened at the location.

The metal hangar spent about 10 years at Sand Point and had a few famous tenants, notes Corbin. “We know the Spirit of St. Louis was hangared overnight in September 1927, during Lindbergh’s tour of the U.S. There’s also a good possibility it was used during the three weeks of preparation of the Douglas [World] Cruisers for the Army’s round the world flight in 1924. It remained at Sand Point until 1931 when they disassembled it again and moved it to a newly created Army emergency airfield at Fort Townsend, over by Port Townsend, Washington.”

Jefferson County International Airport (0S9), Port Townsend, Washington, as it is officially known, sports a 3,000-foot by 75-foot paved runway. The airport is listed on the Seattle VFR sectional as an AOE, or airport of entry, which means customs can be cleared at the airport.

The airfield was declared surplus by the military after WWII, and turned over to the city of Port Townsend in 1947. The airport is the home of the Spruce Goose Restaurant, a place where the pie is so good it is spoken of in hushed, reverent tones, even by the aviation-challenged.

Today the metal hangar is still active. It houses Tailspin Tommy’s, an aircraft maintenance shop owned by Scott Erickson, an AP/IA. Erickson purchased the business from Tommy Wacker in the 1990s. Wacker’s was the second maintenance operation to occupy the space.

According to Erickson, there have been some changes to the building over its lifespan at Jefferson County. “There is a stamp in the concrete floor indicating it was poured in the 1930s—it reads July 10, 1930. The hangar is the largest hangar on the field. If an airplane can’t fit in other hangars on the field they put it in here. However, it does have some quirks though, because of its age.”

Erickson says he’s been working with the county, which owns and operates the airport, to keep up the maintenance on the vintage building to keep it safe and usable while simultaneously keeping its vintage look.

“I enjoy being in there doing maintenance alone when it’s quiet. because there has been so much maintenance in that hangar,” he says. “I enjoy getting completely absorbed in aviation… that’s what it is all about. All the pilots come by and visit.”

The WWI Hangar Turned Shell House

On the shores of Lake Washington is another vintage aircraft hangar which you may soon see in a major Hollywood movie: it is the all-wooden hangar built during World War I to house seaplanes that were used to train naval aviators, and it later became a home to the crew team of the University of Washington. The building, located northeast of the Montlake Cut on Union Bay, still belongs to the university.

According to Corbin, the University of Washington was one three universities selected by the U.S. Navy to train aviators during the war. “The others were Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Dunwoody Industrial Institute in Minneapolis. These are trade schools that turned out high-quality naval aviation cadets that would go on to naval flight training,” he said.

“What makes this hangar so unique is the fact that it is constructed entirely of wood, making it the only known, all-wood, WWI-era, Navy seaplane hangar remaining in the world,” Corbin continued. “Unfortunately, it was completed after the war ended and only saw service as an actual seaplane hangar for a few weeks as the Navy’s aviation ground school classes finished up by the end of January 1919. But that allowed the opportunity for it to become the most unique shell house in the collegiate rowing world.”

The university is in the process of raising funds to restore the building, and they want to recognize both the military and athletic use of the facility.

“The facility saw about 15,000 volunteers come through during WWI,” says Nicole Klein, capital campaign manager for the Associated Students of the University of Washington. “The building had a metal steel trolley that was used to hoist the seaplane out of the water.”

According to Klein, between 1920 and 1949, the 12,000-square-foot building was utilized by the UW men’s rowing team, and George Pocock, a legendary boat builder, had a workshop in the structure where he built the shells that took the UW team to Olympic gold in 1936 and 1948.

The 1936 team is the subject of Daniel James Brown’s 2013 book, The Boys in the Boat, which has been adapted into a film produced by George Clooney. The story follows the University of Washington men’s rowing team as it moves past collegiate rowing giants Harvard and Yale and ultimately go to the 1936 Olympics. The project, which was announced in 2018 was delayed by the pandemic. Filming was done in Los Angeles, Berlin, and at Winnersh Film Studios in Berkshire, U.K., where a replica of the shell house was built.

According to Klein, “The hangar turned shell house was placed on the National Registry of historic places in the 1970s, and it became a Seattle landmark in 2018.” That was also the year that the ASUW launched a fundraising campaign to restore the building and bring the large wooden structure up to code so that it can be used for rental of public gatherings and educational tours.

WATCH: Historic Shell House, by Alex Chen, videographer

“Many visitors are surprised at how large the all-wooden structure is. The Pocock Shop is a small upstairs loft that was able to produce racing shells up to 60 feet long,” says Klein. “Once the restoration is complete it will be open for tours and event rental, it seats 350. The location on the water makes it a prime location for watching regattas and holding picnics.”

If you would like to help restore the shell house, donations can be made here.

What Can You Do To Help?

There are vintage hangars all over the United States, maybe even in your part of the world. If you would like to preserve and perhaps restore the building there are steps to take.

The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources. 

Begin the process with your State Historic Preservation Office and check their web page for National Register information, research materials, and necessary forms to begin the nomination process. If the property and or building is on federal or tribal land, the process begins with the Federal Preservation Office or Tribal Preservation Office.

The property’s age (at least 50 years old), and cultural significance and integrity are taken into account.

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