Fokker F.11

The Fokker F.11 (known to the parent company in the Netherlands as the B.IV) was a luxury flying boat produced as an "Air Yacht" in the United States in the late 1920s. It was originally derived from the Fokker B.III that Fokker had been unable to sell in the Netherlands and had sent to its US subsidiary to see whether it would have better luck in that country. Although originally designed as a military aircraft, the B.III had been fitted with an enclosed cabin for the pilot, and a six-seat passenger cabin within the hull. Fokker America decided to redesign the aircraft further and convert it to monoplane configuration, mating a fuselage patterned on the B.III to the wings of the Fokker Universal. In this configuration, a prototype flew in 1928, but when a decision was taken to produce the design in series, both the fuselage and the wing were so extensively redesigned that they no longer bore much resemblance to their B.III and Universal origins. Because the facilities to produce the duralumin fuselages were not available in the United States, Fokker America arranged to have these constructed in the Netherlands, initially ordering 20.

By the time the first six aircraft had been constructed, however, it was already evident that the design was not going to sell. Fokker tried to make the aircraft more attractive to the US market by fitting a more powerful engine and increasing the seating capacity to ten, but even so, total sales amounted to only four aircraft. One of the remaining F.11s was evaluated as a transport by the USAAC under the designation C-16, but the Army was not interested, and returned the machine to Fokker. The remaining fuselages in the Netherlands were scrapped, although at least two were used for exhibition and training purposes.

The hull of one F.11 (construction number 906) was recovered in the late 1970s from Canada, where it had crashed in 1935. It was placed on display at the Aviodome at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, going into storage at the Aviodrome at Lelystad Airport when the former closed down.

Variants

 * F.11 or B.IV - prototype with B.III hull, Universal wing and Pratt & Whitney Wasp engine, later replaced with Wright Cyclone (1 built)
 * F.11a or B.IVa - production version with redesigned fuselage and wing and Wright Cyclone engine (6 built)
 * F.11AHB - F.11a modified with Pratt & Whitney Hornet and seating increased to ten (2 converted)

Operators

 * United States Army Air Corps
 * United States Army Air Corps