Why Fokker F7 changed my life and yours too, and that would in turn changed the world

In nineteen twenty-five, the Fokker F.VIIA-3m flew for the first time on the fourth of September, after Anthony Fokker and his chief designer Reinhold Platz took a single-engine F.VIIA airliner and fitted two more Wright Whirlwind engines beneath its wing. The reason was reliability: a single-engine airliner like the KLM F.VII that Jan Thomassen à Thuessink van der Hoop flew from Amsterdam to Batavia in nineteen twenty-four had to land wherever it was when its engine stopped. Fokker shipped the three-engine aircraft to the United States for the Ford Reliability Tour of September and October nineteen twenty-five, organised by Henry and Edsel Ford, where eleven of seventeen starters finished with perfect scores and there was in effect no winner. The aircraft then became Richard Byrd's Josephine Ford, flown from Kings Bay on Spitsbergen on the ninth of May, nineteen twenty-six, days before the airship Norge of Roald Amundsen, Lincoln Ellsworth and Umberto Nobile crossed the pole. A sister aircraft, Hubert Wilkins's Detroiter, became Charles Kingsford Smith's Southern Cross, which crossed the Pacific in June nineteen twenty-eight, while the F.VIIB-3m reached one hundred and fifty-four built. Three years after the Southern Cross, the Rockne crash of nineteen thirty-one showed what three engines did not protect. The story is built on the Fokker History archive in the Netherlands, The Henry Ford museum's records of the Josephine Ford and the Ford air tours, Schiphol's account of the nineteen twenty-four Batavia flight, the Edsel B. Ford trophy and tour records, FAA multi-engine training material and the Rockne crash investigation record, with the museum and archive taking priority where accounts differ, including on the date of Byrd's flight and on who won the nineteen twenty-five tour. It is made for aviation history readers, pilots and engineers interested in trimotors, KLM, Atlantic Aircraft, the Kelly Air Mail Act, multi-engine design and early airline reliability. #FokkerF7 #AviationHistory #Trimotor #KLM