Let's continue to look at Every Jetliner Ever Made, in alphabetical order. Today we're going to look at Fokker, of the Netherlands, and also the short-lived VFW-Fokker joint venture that rose and fell in the 1960s and 1970s, and also Fairchild, a US company that partnered up with Fokker and is technically before Fokker in the alphabet but please be quiet. And Dornier, who have no connection with Fokker, but they partnered up with Fairchild, so they're cousins.
FOKKER, VFW-FOKKER, FAIRCHILD, and FAIRCHILD-DORNIER (Netherlands, Germany, The United States)
Before I begin, there's one thing that annoys me. Fokker is, or was, an aircraft manufacturer from The Netherlands, although initially it was based in Berlin. The company was founded in 1912 by a Dutch gentleman called Anthony Fokker. When he was young, he was a little Fokker, but as an adult he was of average height for a Dutch gentleman in the first part of the twentieth century.
Before I begin, there's one thing that annoys me. Fokker is, or was, an aircraft manufacturer from The Netherlands, although initially it was based in Berlin. The company was founded in 1912 by a Dutch gentleman called Anthony Fokker. When he was young, he was a little Fokker, but as an adult he was of average height for a Dutch gentleman in the first part of the twentieth century.
During the First World War Fokker made a string of state-of-the-art fighter aircraft that were flown by the German Flying Corps. Fokker's first big success was the Eindecker monoplane, which had a top speed of around 100mph in a dive, hot stuff for 1915. It only had a single machine-gun, but the gun was equipped with a revolutionary synchronisation gear that allowed the pilot to fire it straight through the propeller disc without blasting off the propeller blades.
Mr Fokker, with one of his Eindeckers.
Thus equipped German fighter pilots realised they could dive on their enemies at speed, shoot off a burst of accurate machine-gun fire, then climb away again before the enemy could react. Thus "boom and zoom" combat was invented. Later in the war Fokker built the DR1 triplane, famously flown by Baron Manfred von Richthofen, and the DRVII, which was one of the most capable fighters of the late-war years. The post-war Armistice required that Germany hand over its remaining DRVIIs to the allies, and it remained in front line service with some European nations into the late 1920s.
Perhaps because he was technically Dutch rather than German, Fokker recovered quickly after the First World War. In the run-up to the Second World War Fokker continued to make warplanes, but this time the company was one of the good guys. Fokker was one of the goodies. The D.XXI, pictured above, was flown by the Netherlands and Finland, while the sleek, twin-engined GI might have staved off the Luftwaffe a little longer if it had been built in greater numbers. In the end the Netherlands only managed to resist Germany for a few days before capitulating. Perhaps fortunately Anthony Fokker was not around to see it happen, having died in 1939.
During the war one of German's best fighter planes was made by a company called Focke-Wulf, which sounds a little bit like Fokker, but the two companies were completely unrelated. So, whenever a stereotypical 1970s club comedian makes a joke about attending a school function where an RAF guest complains that he was surrounded by Fokkers, and the teacher explains that the guest is actually talking about Messerschmits, to which the pilot responds that he knew what he said, it's balls. It couldn't have happened. He wouldn't have been surrounded by Fokkers. He would have been surrounded by Focke-Wulfs, and he would have known it.
That might sound trivial, and I realise that I have now used up one-quarter of the article on an irrelevance, but I just had to get it off my chest. Comedy doesn't work without a foundation of truth. That's why randomly-generated jokes are never funny. They're just arbitrary nonsense. The whole essence of comedy is subversion of the truth. If there's no truth, comedy is just chaos. There is no comedy in the absence of truth.
No comedy in the absence of truth. I begin. Dah dah dah Fokker was founded in 1912 by Anthony Fokker of the Netherlands, although the company itself was headquartered in Berlin. Business took a downturn in November 1918, so he moved back to the Netherlands and founded Nederlandse Vliegtuigenfabriek, perhaps wary of using the Fokker name again. An order from the US Army resulted in him founding the Atlantic Aircraft Company of New Jersey, which eventually ended up being bought by General Motors and merged into North American Aviation having achieved not a great deal.
The European branches of Fokker were much more successful. In the 1950s the European Fokker had a big hit with the Fokker F27 Friendship turboprop airliner, pictured above. It's outside the scope of this document, but the success of the F27 prompted Fokker to develop a jet airliner, which entered revenue service in 1969 as the Fokker F28 Fellowship.
The Fellowship was a completely fresh design. It was a regional jet, one of the first, specifically aimed at the short-range market. It had a configuration that went on to become standard for regional jets, with two rear-mounted engines and a T-tail, viz the following image of four different small airliners:
Why do so many small jets have rear-mounted engines and a T-tail? There are a couple of reasons. Smaller jets tend to sit lower to the ground, so it makes sense to mount the engines as high as possible in order to keep them away from runway debris. Another advantage is that the undercarriage can be made shorter and more robust, and freight doesn't have to be lifted so high. The T-tail came about because the main wings of an airliner leave a trail of disturbed air in their wake, which reduces the control authority of the tailplane, so it makes sense to lift the tail above the engines, out of the shadow of the wings.
The F28 was available in four different variants, with seating for 65-85 passengers and a range of 1,000-1,500 miles. It sold 241 units, mostly to airlines in Australia, the Far East, and Europe. I'm not an expert on the regional jet market, but I have the impression that 1969 was slightly too soon to target the US hub-and-spoke model, which in the 1970s was still dominated by turboprops. The F28 was smaller than the Douglas DC-9 and BAC One-Eleven, which were more versatile because they were just large enough for point-to-point routes.
The F28 remained on sale until 1987, ironically leaving production just as regional jets were starting to become popular. Do you notice how I say "starting to become popular", instead of "starting to take off"? That's because I despise the kind of lazy newspaper writing whereby an airline in financial difficulties "encounters turbulence" or it "rides out the headwinds". It's superficially clever, but it's hollow.
I despise the kind of lazy newspaper writing whereby a science fiction film "has a galaxy of stars", or a film set at sea "sinks with all hands" or "is swamped with cliches", or a film in which a serial killer murders people with a sieve "has a plot that has more holes than a sieve". Let it be known that I, Ashley Pomeroy, refused to fill up space with nonsense. Because I, Ashley Pomeroy, outrank trank.
I despise the kind of lazy newspaper writing whereby a science fiction film "has a galaxy of stars", or a film set at sea "sinks with all hands" or "is swamped with cliches", or a film in which a serial killer murders people with a sieve "has a plot that has more holes than a sieve". Let it be known that I, Ashley Pomeroy, refused to fill up space with nonsense. Because I, Ashley Pomeroy, outrank trank.
Earlier in this article, many words ago, I mentioned Focke-Wulf. During the Second World War the company was responsible for the FW-190, one of Germany's top fighter aircraft. It was produced in lesser numbers than the Messerschmitt 109, but had a more modern design, and was still competitive at the end of the war. In the post-war years Focke-Wulf concentrated on gliders, and latterly rocketry, and in 1964 it merged with Weserflug to form VFW, which eventually ended up as part of Airbus.
Before it did so VFW and Fokker teamed up to make a regional jet, and thus Fokker and Focke-Wulf briefly collaborated. The result was the VFW-Fokker 614, pictured above, which first flew in 1971 and entered revenue service in 1975. The VFW 614 was an oddity. As mentioned earlier regional jets tend to use rear-mounted engines, because smaller jets don't have enough clearance to hang the engines from the wings unless the undercarriage is very tall.
There are however good technical reasons for hanging the engines from the wings. The weight of the engines counteracts the natural tendency of the wings to bend upwards during flight, which means that the wings can be made lighter, because they don't need as much structural reinforcement. Putting the engines in the wings also means that the control wires and fuel lines don't have to go through the rear of the fuselage, which means that the cabin can be stretched backwards a little bit. It also makes it a lot easier for technicians to work on the engines.
The VFW 614 was an attempt to combine the benefits of high-mounted engines with the benefits of wing-mounted engines, by putting the engines in pods on top of the wings. The end result was visually distinctive. Only a handful of other aircraft have used over-the-wing engines, most famously the Boeing YC-14 experimental transport (pictured below) and the visually similar Antonov AN-72. With careful design the engine exhaust can be made to flow over the wing, generating lift, although that wasn't a factor in the case of the VFW 614.
There are however good technical reasons for hanging the engines from the wings. The weight of the engines counteracts the natural tendency of the wings to bend upwards during flight, which means that the wings can be made lighter, because they don't need as much structural reinforcement. Putting the engines in the wings also means that the control wires and fuel lines don't have to go through the rear of the fuselage, which means that the cabin can be stretched backwards a little bit. It also makes it a lot easier for technicians to work on the engines.
The VFW 614 was an attempt to combine the benefits of high-mounted engines with the benefits of wing-mounted engines, by putting the engines in pods on top of the wings. The end result was visually distinctive. Only a handful of other aircraft have used over-the-wing engines, most famously the Boeing YC-14 experimental transport (pictured below) and the visually similar Antonov AN-72. With careful design the engine exhaust can be made to flow over the wing, generating lift, although that wasn't a factor in the case of the VFW 614.
The positioning also frees up space that would otherwise be used in the rear of the aircraft. The VFW 614 itself was eight metres shorter than the basic Embraer ERJ, for example, but carried just as many passengers. On the downside the arrangement put the engines right next to the cabin, which complicated servicing and led to complaints about engine noise. The close proximity of the emergency exit to the jet intake worries me.
The VFW 614 was specifically designed to have a short take-off run. In the late 1960s one of the big new ideas was the STOLport, STOL standing for Short Take-Off and Landing. A STOLport has a short runway intended to service roughly the same market as a train station, in locations where there isn't space for train lines. STOLPorts make sense in remote parts of the world, where they're often the only practical way to get from one town to the next, but they never became a mainstream thing. Disneyworld in Florida briefly trialled a STOLport, but noise regulations largely killed them off, combined with the fact that aircraft optimised for short take-off tend not to be very fuel-efficient. They need burly powerplants and thick wings, whereas a long-range airliner is more akin to a graceful gazelle, with thin wings and engines that provide most of their power at high altitude.
The VFW 614 carried 40-44 passengers over a range of about 700 miles. It was aimed at the kind of small airlines that still used the Douglas DC-3. Throughout this series of articles the DC-3 casts a long shadow. In the post-war years it dominated regional air. There were several attempts to capture the same market with a jet aircraft, all of which foundered on the simple fact that war-surplus DC-3s were cheap, and jet aircraft are expensive.
By all accounts the VFW 614's engine arrangement was sound, but the aircraft itself was a commercial disaster on a par with the Dassault Mercure. Development began in the late 1960s, but by the time it entered service it was obvious that the short range and odd specification were never going to make economic sense compared to a turboprop. Cimber Air of Denmark bought two, a pair of French airlines bought another two each, and the West German Luftwaffe bought three, for a grand total of ten sales, one less than the Mercure.
In total nineteen were produced, including three prototypes, one of which crashed. The majority were bought back by VFW in the late 1970s and scrapped, including several airframes that had been constructed but left unsold. This saved VFW the cost of having to produce spare parts but does mean that sourcing photographs for this document was not easy. The Luftwaffe flew their three 614s until the 1980s. One remained in the air as a testbed for Daimler Benz Aerospace until the late 1990s and another was flown by the German government, also as a testbed, until 2012.
Part of the problem seems to have been a lack of enthusiasm for the type from Fokker. The VFW 614 was backed by the West German government in the hope that it would boost the German commercial aviation industry. Fokker was brought in for its greater experience selling commercial jets to the international market, but the VFW 614 ended up competing with the Fokker F28, and in any case the market for a faster, more expensive Douglas DC-3 that had half the range just wasn't there.
The VFW 614 carried 40-44 passengers over a range of about 700 miles. It was aimed at the kind of small airlines that still used the Douglas DC-3. Throughout this series of articles the DC-3 casts a long shadow. In the post-war years it dominated regional air. There were several attempts to capture the same market with a jet aircraft, all of which foundered on the simple fact that war-surplus DC-3s were cheap, and jet aircraft are expensive.
By all accounts the VFW 614's engine arrangement was sound, but the aircraft itself was a commercial disaster on a par with the Dassault Mercure. Development began in the late 1960s, but by the time it entered service it was obvious that the short range and odd specification were never going to make economic sense compared to a turboprop. Cimber Air of Denmark bought two, a pair of French airlines bought another two each, and the West German Luftwaffe bought three, for a grand total of ten sales, one less than the Mercure.
In total nineteen were produced, including three prototypes, one of which crashed. The majority were bought back by VFW in the late 1970s and scrapped, including several airframes that had been constructed but left unsold. This saved VFW the cost of having to produce spare parts but does mean that sourcing photographs for this document was not easy. The Luftwaffe flew their three 614s until the 1980s. One remained in the air as a testbed for Daimler Benz Aerospace until the late 1990s and another was flown by the German government, also as a testbed, until 2012.
Part of the problem seems to have been a lack of enthusiasm for the type from Fokker. The VFW 614 was backed by the West German government in the hope that it would boost the German commercial aviation industry. Fokker was brought in for its greater experience selling commercial jets to the international market, but the VFW 614 ended up competing with the Fokker F28, and in any case the market for a faster, more expensive Douglas DC-3 that had half the range just wasn't there.
A handsome-looking pre-war Fairchild JK-1, a one-off variation of the Fairchild 45 made for the US Navy.
Moving swiftly on, in the 1950s Fairchild Aviation of the United States struck a deal with Fokker to licence-build the F27 Friendship turboprop. This resulted in Fairchild developing a stretched version of the F27, the Fairchild FH-227, and when Fokker announced the F28 jetliner Fairchild tried to repeat the process.
The Fairchild 228 was envisaged as a licence-built Fokker F28, with a smaller fuselage that could carry 50 passengers. It had the same arrangement as the F28 - T-tail, rear engines - but with more efficient Rolls Royce Trents instead of Speys. Unfortunately development of the Trent took longer than expected, and in the end Fairchild decided to cancel the project after only making two prototypes. At the point the Fokker-Fairchild arrangement petered out, although Fairchild will reappear a few paragraphs from now.
Fokker had more luck with the Fokker 70 and Fokker 100, which were developed as replacements for the Fokker 28. The Fokker 100, pictured above, was essentially a stretched F28, slotting into the aviation market in between smaller full-sized jets, such as the Boeing 737, and regional jets from Embraer and Bombardier. It carried around one hundred passengers over a range of around 1500 miles, with the Fokker 70 following it to market slightly later as essentially a two-thirds-length Fokker 100.
Development of the Fokker 100 began in 1983 and continued throughout the rest of the 1980s, with the type entering service in 1988. Its commercial prospects were boosted by a large order from American Airlines, but Fokker had problems. Its commercial airline business was sweet, but the company made most of its money from licence-building warplanes, such as the Lockheed F-104 and General Dynamics F-16. French defence giant DASA bought a large stake in the company in 1993, but DASA itself was in financial trouble as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which depressed defence sales throughout the 1990s. Bombardier briefly considered buying Fokker, but backed out, and the Danish government decided not to intervene, so ultimately Fokker declared bankruptcy in January 1996, even though the Fokker 100 and 70 were still in production.
The factory remained in operation for a year or so afterwards, with Fokker going on to sell 283 Fokker 100s and 47 Fokker 70s. The rights to produce the two aircraft were bought up by a successor company, Rekkof, but to date production has not restarted, which is a shame because the design was attractive. As of this writing some aircraft remain in service, but parts availability will apparently cease in 2030.
Do you remember Fairchild from a few paragraphs ago? In the late 1990s Fairchild purchased Dornier of Germany. Dornier was another storied European aviation manufacturer. In the post-war years it concentrated on small, high-performance regional turboprops. Dornier had ambitions to sell a jet, but the company didn't have enough money to develop one.
Development of the Fokker 100 began in 1983 and continued throughout the rest of the 1980s, with the type entering service in 1988. Its commercial prospects were boosted by a large order from American Airlines, but Fokker had problems. Its commercial airline business was sweet, but the company made most of its money from licence-building warplanes, such as the Lockheed F-104 and General Dynamics F-16. French defence giant DASA bought a large stake in the company in 1993, but DASA itself was in financial trouble as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, which depressed defence sales throughout the 1990s. Bombardier briefly considered buying Fokker, but backed out, and the Danish government decided not to intervene, so ultimately Fokker declared bankruptcy in January 1996, even though the Fokker 100 and 70 were still in production.
The factory remained in operation for a year or so afterwards, with Fokker going on to sell 283 Fokker 100s and 47 Fokker 70s. The rights to produce the two aircraft were bought up by a successor company, Rekkof, but to date production has not restarted, which is a shame because the design was attractive. As of this writing some aircraft remain in service, but parts availability will apparently cease in 2030.
Do you remember Fairchild from a few paragraphs ago? In the late 1990s Fairchild purchased Dornier of Germany. Dornier was another storied European aviation manufacturer. In the post-war years it concentrated on small, high-performance regional turboprops. Dornier had ambitions to sell a jet, but the company didn't have enough money to develop one.
The Dornier 328JET (top) was closely based on the turboprop-powered Dorner 328 (bottom).
Fairchild's cash solved that problem, but only briefly, because Fairchild itself was in trouble, for more or less the same reason as DASA. By the time the Fairchild-Dornier 328JET entered service, in 1999, Fairchild was on its last legs, and production only continued until 2003. Fairchild-Dornier managed to sell just over 100 328JETs, and by all accounts it was a good design, but the company just didn't have the money to sell it effectively. Whatever remains of Fairchild appears to have evaporated into the world of private equity, while support for the Dornier 328 and 328JET is managed by the Sierra Nevada Corporation.
What was it like? It was essentially a jet-powered variation of the Dornier 328, with a T-tail, and two engines hung from pylons below a high-mounted wing. The configuration was similar to the BAe 146, but much smaller, with two engines instead of four. It had a distinctive, blade-like "supercritical wing" that was optimised for high cruise speeds, and a passenger capacity of 30-33 people. A stretched version, the 428JET, was in development when Fairchild collapsed. It would have carried 44 people. As with the Fokker 100 there is a slim hope that production might one day restart, although several attempts to get the aircraft back into production have come to nothing.
The 328JET targeted the same market as the VFW-614, a market that was once saturated with the Douglas DC-3. In the 1990s it seemed that the short-range market was going to be taken over by jets, but the 1990s was a time of plenty, and over the last two decades or so the turboprop market has managed to survive. This is of course completely out of the scope of this document, but it will be interesting to see if the short-range, 30-40 seat market leads to a resurgence of turboprop sales.
What was it like? It was essentially a jet-powered variation of the Dornier 328, with a T-tail, and two engines hung from pylons below a high-mounted wing. The configuration was similar to the BAe 146, but much smaller, with two engines instead of four. It had a distinctive, blade-like "supercritical wing" that was optimised for high cruise speeds, and a passenger capacity of 30-33 people. A stretched version, the 428JET, was in development when Fairchild collapsed. It would have carried 44 people. As with the Fokker 100 there is a slim hope that production might one day restart, although several attempts to get the aircraft back into production have come to nothing.
The 328JET targeted the same market as the VFW-614, a market that was once saturated with the Douglas DC-3. In the 1990s it seemed that the short-range market was going to be taken over by jets, but the 1990s was a time of plenty, and over the last two decades or so the turboprop market has managed to survive. This is of course completely out of the scope of this document, but it will be interesting to see if the short-range, 30-40 seat market leads to a resurgence of turboprop sales.
Next, the letter G. Did Grumman build a jetliner? No. So let's skip to H. Did Hughes build a jetliner? No. How about I. Did Ilyushin build a jetliner? No... yes. Actually yes! They did!
