other F-aircraft (under development)
Fokker F-8 Duif
February 28, 2001
Salvage of Fokker F 8 in jungle
From our domestic editorial team
SCHIPHOL - Employees of the National Aviation Museum Aviodome left this week to an Indian tribe in the Amazon region in Venezuela to salvage a 1927 Fokker F 8.
It concerns De Duif, a passenger aircraft that was built in the 1920s and consisted of wood, linen and metal. Although the wood and textiles have disappeared, the tubular steel body is still in reasonable condition. The remains of the two engines are also still present. The ten employees want to transfer the remains of the device discovered a year and a half ago to the Netherlands.
De Duif flew for KLM in Europe from 1928 to 1937. KLM then used the aircraft in the Dutch West Indies (Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles). The plane was sold to Venezuela in 1939. Within a month, it ended up on a flight strip that was too small in the jungle. One wing hit the ground, after which the plane caught fire. The plane burned out and the crew managed to reach civilization again after a few weeks.
Tip
Until two years ago, aviation historians thought that there would be no pre-war KLM aircraft anywhere in the world. For years, it was believed that the device was lost, until Aviodome employees received a tip from Venezuelan colleagues at a museum conference in Washington in 1999 that there were still remnants of the device.
Six months after the tip, the museum equipped a three-man search expedition. In Carácas was found the pilot that the Fokker had flown in 1939. Thanks to his directions, they managed to reach the area where the plane lay by air.
A helpful chief of a local Indian tribe was willing to point out the location of the Fokker. In addition, the expedition noticed that various parts of the plane had already been taken into use by the Indians. The aircraft's fuel tanks were used to brew an indigenous type of beer. The chief himself had the pilot's seat in his cabin as a trophy. The Aviodome also hopes to include these parts. In exchange, the Indians get new tanks to brew beer.
It is planned that a Cougar helicopter and a Lockheed Hercules transport aircraft of the Venezuelan Air Force fly the parts to the coast for further transport by ship. After the disposal, the remnants are expected to be exhibited at the Aviodome Aviation Museum at Schiphol in early May.
Heyday
The Fokker F 8 was the only twin-engine passenger plane that Fokker built before World War II. Other passenger aircraft that Fokker built during its heyday - around 1930 Fokker was the largest aircraft factory in the world - usually had three engines.
Fokker designed the F 8 for KLM in 1926 as a successor to the faithful single-engine F 7a on KLM's European network (then limited to Brussels, Paris, London, Hamburg, Copenhagen and Malmö). This network had increasingly been processed: from 6,000 passengers in 1926 to 13,000 passengers in 1927. The Fokker F 8 De Duif was built in 1927 by the Fokker factory in Amsterdam North. The plane could seat fifteen passengers.
Source: Reformatorisch Dagblad https://www.rd.nl/oud/bin/010228bin07.html
Fokker F-28
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