Homeward bound Fokker

[Okami]

Here's an announcement of a thread I'll be starting tomorrow: the return of a Fokker to Schiphol.

The date is December 30th, 1955, and at Kastrup airport near Copenhagen, a crew runs through its checklists prior to starting its engines. The flight is rather special, as the plane is a Fokker. Not an F27, of which the prototype is still going through its trials at the Fokker factory at Schiphol airport; rather, it is a Fokker F.VIIa, one of a handful of pre-War Fokker aircraft which survived both a lifetime of service, and the Second World War.



The aircraft is Fokker OY-ASE, which until recently was used for newspaper flights in Denmark. It had originally been delivered as CH-158 to Balair in March of 1928, before becoming OY-DED with Det Danske Luftselskab/Danish Airlines in 1930. In 1946, it was sold as SE-ASE to Skaneflyg of Sweden, changing ownership a number of times before ending up as OY-ASE of Dansk Luftfart in 1953. In 1955, it was jointly purchased by KLM and Aviodome for the Aviodome collection. The museum was rather happy with this purchase, especially after the fiasco of the Fokker F.XXII.

Weird as it might sound, the decision was taken to transport the venerable aircraft to the museum... on its own power, by air. So that December day, after months of preparation, the day had finally come for the vintage Fokker to return home, almost 28 years after it had been built...

 

[Dangerousdave26]

An interesting history there to be sure.

Who's model is that?

 

[Okami]

Hi Dave,

The model is the Fokker F.VIIa by Jens B. Kristensen, one of a series of early Fokker aircraft done by him (Fokker C.VM, F.VIIa, FVIIB/3m & F.XII). The OY-ASE repaint is a quicky done by me based on the Avianca repaint by Jorge Andres Calderon C, a bit too quick even, as I discovered I hadn't painted out the 'Medelin' name on the nose. Just pretend it isn't there... ^^;

I did it yesterday (although I had planned this flight a long time ago, well before the present situation the Aviod(r)ome is in), because my other plans for the day were somewhat scuppered by the extordinary storm which lashed most of Western Europe. Of course I made one tiny mistake when I set my flight: I accidentally ticked the box for real world weather - i.e. the very same storm. >.<

 

[Okami]

Anyway, as promised, here's the flight:

As stated before, the date is December 30th 1955, and after some preparation, OY-ASE is finally ready for its flight home to Schiphol airport. Built in 1928, the aircraft has had a long career behind it. As one of the rare surviving pre-War airframes, it was only recently purchased for preservation by the KLM and the Aviodrome museum at Schiphol. For the museum, the purchase marked the end of a long, and at times frustrating, attempt at purchasing historical airframes.



Before the War, Anthony Fokker himself had started collecting a number of historical airframes. Among them were the V.45/F.II prototype from 1919, originally registered as D-57 but later re-registered as H-NABC and Fokker F.VII H-NACR from 1924. He intended to start a national aviation museum.



However, history and the Luftwaffe decided different. The small collection which Anthony Fokker had so carefully gathered, was crushed under a number of bombs on that fateful morning of May 10th 1940, when the Netherlands were invaded. All three planes were destroyed, their remains sent away as scrap in later clearances. Many other historical Fokkers shared the fate, with most of the fleets of KLM, Sabena, CLS/CSA, LOT, Malert, Air France, Ala Littoria and other European companies disappearing during the War years, as well as some other preserved airframes (a Fokker F.VIIA of the North Netherlands Aviation Museum, as well as the unique Fokker F.XIV which was preserved as a restaurant near Soesterdal in Holland).



For some years after the War, the idea of an aviation museum lay dormant, as rebuilding the damages of World War II took priority. However, at the start of the 1950s, Anthony Fokker's idea was rekindled when the opportunity arose to purchase a unique pre-War Fokker. The Fokker F.XXII. Much frustration and heart-break ensued.



To make things short: in 1935, Fokker built four Fokker F.XXII four-engined passenger planes, which was conceived as a smaller version of the F.XXXVI. Three of the aircraft were built for KLM, while the fourth was built for ABA of Sweden. Capable of carrying 22 passengers at 225 km/h over a distance of 1350 km, the aircraft was Fokker's attempt at rivalling the new Douglas aircraft, however KLM had already decided to order tens of the new, all-metal American aircraft over Fokker's canvas over wood and steel tube designs.



Four soon became two: only three months after delivery, on July 14th 1935, PH-AJQ 'Kwikstaart' (Wagtail) was lost when two of its engines failed on take-off out of Schiphol due to a loss of fuel pressure; in the ensuing fire, four crew and two passengers died; the steward and fourteen passengers escaped with their lives. The accident was the beginning of a disastrous week for KLM: three days later one of their DC-2s crashed and burned on take-off at Bushir, Iran, luckily with no loss among passengers and crew; yet another three days later, another DC-2 of the company crashed in the Swiss Alps, killing all four crew and nine passengers. The Swedish Fokker F.XXII was lost one year later, when in June of 1936 it crashed on landing at Malmö, Sweden, luckily without any casualties among its passengers and crew.



The remaining two Fokker F.XXIIs flew with KLM until just before WWII, when they were sold to English companies. However, both were soon after impressed by the RAF. In 1943, one was lost in a crash in Loch Talbert near Kintyre, while the other suffered an engine fire which rendered it useless. This last survivor was taken back by its former owner, Scottish Aviation, at the end of the war, given a general overhaul and new engines, and put back into service, flying the Prestwick-Belfast route for BEA until August 1947.



After its retirement, the Fokker F.XXII stood in a hangar at Prestwick. At this point, talks were started with the Netherlands, whether they were interested in buying the unique machine. Protracted negociations resulted in a deadlock: the Dutch were interested, but they didn't have the money to buy the aircraft... or the place to store it. But Scottish Aviation needed the space the machine was taking. So in July of 1953, the former KLM machine was rolled out of its hangar at Prestwick... and rolled to a corner of the airfield... and burnt. A unique piece of Dutch aviation heritage was lost forever.



With this fiasco fresh in mind, the Dutch decided history could not repeat itself. So the next time the opportunity arose, they would grab it. And then, another pre-War Fokker emerged. A long-forgotten machine, which had been relegated to flying around newspapers in a Nordic country...

To be continued.

 

[Volker Böhme]

Hi,

and this is how it looks like now:
View attachment 55802

Best regards,
Volker

 

[Okami]

Hi Volker,

Yes, that is her indeed, but more on that later...

Fokker OY-ASE was one of three Fokker F.VIIa's built for Balair in 1927-28. Through coincidence, all three Fokkers survived the War, even though they had entirely different careers.While the first one, CH-157, was retained by Swissair, eventually ending up at the Lüzern Verkehrshaus in 1950, the two other ones were sold in 1930 to Det Danske Luftselskab/Danish Airlines when Balair started receiving its F.VIIB-3m's.



Both aircraft remained in the airline's fleet until the Second World War, and after the dust had settled somewhat, they were retained for use on domestic routes until all Danish civilian aviation was forbidden by the occupying German forces. Post-war, Danish Airlines started receiving DC-3s, which allowed the airline to dispose of the vintage Fokker aircraft. And both aircraft were purchased by Skaneflyg of Sweden.



Both SE-ASE as well as its sister SE-ASF remained in use until the early 1950s, when the ex-Balair pair were finally split up. SE-ASE was lucky, ending up as OY-ASE with Dansk Luftfart; SE-ASF, however, met its fate in November of 1952, when it was scrapped. In 1954, the surviving aircraft was parked up in a hangar at Kastrup, and it was well on its way to meet the same way of its sister, when fate intervened - this time in an altogether more positive way.



After the Fokker F.XXII fiasco, the people behind the yet to be established Dutch Aviation museum was looking for historical airframes. They had their eye on a Fokker F.VIIa, the one-time PH-AET/PH-RSL/PH-NLL, which had formerly served with KLM before becoming an instructional airframe, but then KLM somehow got wind of OY-ASE's existence and availability. With some help of Fokker, the aircraft was jointly purchased and donated to the Dutch Aviation museum, the future Aviodome.



Unlike PH-NLL, OY-ASE required little work to return it to airworthiness, so the decision was taken to overhaul it at Kastrup, fly it on its own power to Schiphol, and to fully restore it there.



It would be hard to imagine such a thing now, but back then, it was the quickest way to transport the plane. One has to remember that transport by air was almost impossible, as the Fokker F.VIIa was too large to be transported, even in sections (and they weren't sure what would happen if they took the plane apart, it might have irreparably damaged the historical airframe), and transport by road wasn't an option either, as the European freeway network wasn't as developed as it is today - for starters, the bridge linking Sjælland (where Copenhagen is) and Fyn (Odense) wasn't opened until 1998; and while Fyn and mainland Jutland were linked by bridge in 1955, that bridge's narrow box construction - one lane either way - meant transporting oversize loads that way was nearly impossible (the new Lillebælt-bridge with three lanes either way wasn't opened until 1970). So both via Great Belt or the Femer Belt, the aircraft would have to have been transported via water.




Luckily, the aircraft had been flown until very recently, and it had been kept in good condition, so only some minor reconditioning had to take place to make it airworthy again. KLM provided the pilots for the project - some of their more senior pilots had actually flown on the Fokker F.VII-series before the War - and a route was planned which made it easier on the crews to ferry the aircraft to the Netherlands.





The planned route was Copenhagen - Hamburg- Groningen -Schiphol, which would be flown under VFR conditions. And so it happened that at the end of 1955, a vintage Fokker took to the skies, enroute to the place where it had been built so many years ago...





To be continued...

 

[Okami]

Back to the flight itself - my simulated flight, rather than the real one of 1955.

http://www.oy-reg.dk/billeder/l8942.jpg

Other than a picture of OY-ASE at Hamburg, I have actually found little reference of anything out of the ordinary occuring on that December day. Actually, much to my amazement, I actually didn't even find any reference to the flight occuring in Flight Magazine...!!



As I mentioned before, I had planned this flight quite a while ago, having found the story, details on the route, and a date. My rather large disfortune was chosing the wrong day - or rather, the wrong weather. Without any real thought, I took the real-weather option on the day that saw Western Europe's first large storm of the year. In fact, even in the simulated aviation world, I saw things happening that I didn't think were possible.



Take this picture, for instance. With a 30-knot headwind, the poor little Fokker was airborne in about 100 feet on taking off out of Hamburg. By the time it had reached the crossing of the two runways, about 3000ft from the runway treshold, it was already at about 500 ft altitude! This, of course, made for a very neat take-off; unfortunately, I then had to cope with those very same headwinds all the way to Groningen. Undoubtedly, the real December 30th 1955 was a nice, calm, sunny day, as I cannot imagine the people of Fokker and KLM risking such a unique aircraft.



About an hour earlier, I had landed at Hamburg on the 23 runway, with a BEA Ambassador in front of me. Much to my surprise, the AI airliner in front of me was struggling with the gusts, and ended up landing about 100ft besides the runway!



As on the first leg, the weather was constantly changing on the second leg. One moment, visibility was excellent, with blue skies and scattered clouds in the distance; the next, however, there was barely a couple of miles visibility, with rain and thunderstorms and all.



And as you can see, even in the clear bits, there were considerable headwinds. Most of the way, my poor little Fokker was crabbing its way along at about 60 kts ground speed. In those conditions, the vintage plane did a little over an hour over the first bit of the second leg, roughly the equivalent distance between Hamburg and Bremen.



And near Bremen, I got in the middle of a rather violent thunderstorm. It made me rather happy to be sitting behind the computer screen - the real Fokker F.VIIA didn't have side cockpit windows...



Things calmed down a bit near the Dutch border, where the thunderstorms and rain died down, however the visibility didn't improve. With a cloud ceiling around 2000 ft, I decided to descend below 1000 ft so I could have a clear view of the ground below. Here's the Fokker near Leer, a German city located on the Ems river, about 10 km East of the Dutch border.



Once past the Dutch border, it was just 20 more miles - and minutes - to Groningen, but there I managed to do a straight-in landing.



So, after a very exhausting 2 hours, I finally touched down at Groningen-Eelde airport, the second stop of OY-ASE. For the first time in decades, the little airliner had touched down on its birth soil. Here it was less than 100 miles from its future home...



To be continued...

 

[Okami]

Oddly, when I reprised the flight two days later (i.e. yesterday), the weather was still as bad.



Visibility was reduced, and there were quite a lot of showers in the vicinity, and even some lightning. I very much doubt these Fokkers ever flew in this kind of weather...



Not long after, the sun began to break through, though this confronted me with another problem: it was setting fast. Question was, whether I would reach Schiphol before dark. I was only about 60 nm away, though at my present speed, that meant it would still take me about an hour or so...!!



About half an hour into the flight, a new sight greets the Fokker: the Ijselmeer. The last time the plane was here, back in the early 1930s when it was flying for Det Danske Luftselskab/Danish Airlines, this vast expanse of water would still have been called the Zuiderzee. The Ijselmeer was only created in 1932, when the Afsluitdijk was completed.



Flying over the Ijselmeer, with the sun setting in the distance, it just makes you realise how... odd it must have been for those early passengers. Just dependent on some steel tubing, some wooden offcuts, and some sewn-together canvas.



Coincidentally, to the south, one can see the reclamation works of the Southeast part of Flevoland. In 1955, these were still two years away from completion, and it was inconceivable that our little Fokker would eventually end up there, some 48 years later...



Making landfall near Volendam, our Fokker ends up in yet another spot of bad weather. Just 20 minutes away from the airport, Schiphol seems further than ever before.



Just a thousand feet above the ground, our Fokker flies over the Dutch capital, as it begins its approach into Schiphol airport. ATC warns us about traffic in the neighbourhood, a couple of Gloster Meteors doing touch and goes out of Schiphol. Technology has advanced incredibly since our Fokker left its birthplace, its difficult to imagine some of the older workmen at the Fokker plant worked both on this little passenger plane, and the modern jets the factory is turning out for its national air force...



Coping with the crosswinds, our F.VIIA finally touches down at Schiphol, well over eight hours after leaving Kastrup airport. Within moments, the little plane comes to a halt, before it begins to taxy off the runway.



On its way to the Fokker factories, the Fokker passes the air terminal. The relatively new building is yet another witness as to how passenger transport has evolved since OY-ASE left this airport those many years ago: many times larger than the original Amsterdam air terminal, the building is too small for the demands modern air transport is putting on it.



And so, as the sun sets on the next-to-last day of 1955, a Fokker has returned home. The people of KLM, Fokker and the National Air Museum are rather pleased with themselves, having found a centerpiece for their new museum...

 

[Okami]

Postscript:




The Fokker F.VIIA was lovingly restored by the people of Fokker, and repainted as H-NACT, the second F.VIIA built. The original H-NACT served with KLM for all of its life, being reregistered as PH-ACT in 1929, and destroyed on May 10th 1940.



Under its colours of H-NACT, the old OY-ASE continued to be flown occasionally until 1959. Here it is shown together with the second prototype of the Fokker F27, sometime in 1957. After it was grounded in 1959, the aircraft was handed over to the National Air Museum, and became the center part of the Aeroplanorama display, which opened at Schiphol in 1960. The original museum had just 10 aircraft: an Otto Lilienthal glider replica; a Wright Flyer replica; the Fokker Spin replica; the fuselage of a Fokker S.4; the Pander Zögling glider; the sole surviving Fokker C.V reconnaissance aircraft; a Cierva C.30A; a Tiger Moth; a Spitfire IX; and of course, our Fokker F.VIIA. This museum was closed in 1967, and re-opened in 1969 as the new Aviodome.



Sadly, though, the rescue of one Fokker led to the demise of another. Remember PH-NLL? I mentioned it before as the 'other' F.VIIA which had been contemplated by the National Air Museum for preservation. As soon as OY-ASE arrived at Schiphol, the people behind the Museum lost interest in the historical frame. At one time considered as a project for an airworthy F.VIIA, the remains of this Fokker - discovered as a chicken coop in 1953! - were taken to Gilzen-Rijen in 1957. For a while, it looked like it would be restored after all, but in 1960, it ended up with A.H. van Schooten - a scrap dealer. Sometime in 1961-1962, this former (real!) KLM Fokker ended up being scrapped...

 

[Ralf Roggeveen]

Very nice, thank you Nikko!

Of course you can actually put the Aviodrome scenery into fs, but I am very worried about the REAL thing...

Does anbody know what's happening? Ferry? You live near there and it must be in the Dutch papers. :ques:

(BTW, not sure about the F.VIIa, but reckon the 3m version must have flown in some pretty terrible weather on the way down to Batavia - adding motors made it that much safer of course).