Turns like a devil, climbs like a monkey

[Olham 164]

"Turns like a devil, climbs like a monkey!" or similar were von Richthofen's words about the Fokker Dr. I.

I still hope to see the famous Fokker "flat turn" from Mikael Carlson one day.

But here is at least the other bit - "climbs like a monkey!"

 

Watch the takeoff scene from the cockpit camera angle - a hairraising climb, almost like a helicopter.

 

[Hauksbee 103]

Very nice, well made film. I wonder where that airfield is because when they are spinning the prop. there's a Ju-52 sitting in the background. I wonder also, if that Dr.1 had the standard Oberusel engine? I was surprised to see it do an inside loop. I'll have to try WOFF and see if I can do the same. And there's a gauge sitting between the guns. Is that an ammunition counter?

[Olham 164]

The video was taken in Germany at Gelnhausen, filmed from a Pilatus Porter.

That Ju-52 is from the Swiss company "Ju-Air".

 

http://www.biplanes.de/

 

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ju-Air

[Hauksbee 103]

That is really cool that a Swiss Airline is flying Ju-52's. I could decipher (with my High School German) that they had four. I'm assuming these are originals? Ju-52's were common in Europe, but not in America. We had Ford Tri-motors. Henry Ford (the car industrialist) wanted to build Ju-52's under license for the American market but Hugo Junkers said 'no'. Henry didn't like saying people saying 'no' to him, so he put together a design team and simply copied the plane.

 

Edited November 30, 2015 by Hauksbee

[xrearl 27]

just once! Great plane,and pilot

[JFM 18]

Hauksbee, that's the fuel level gauge.

[Hauksbee 103]

Hauksbee, that's the fuel level gauge.

What an odd place for it! Is the fuel tank directly under it by any chance?

[Olham 164]

Just read in another forum, that Carlson's Dr. I flies with the original Oberursel rotary.

 

The makers of WW1 sims are always aiming for the English-speaking market, and so they

tend to make the Sopwith Camel as great as any possible, to allow it to dominate most of the

German fighters, maybe with the exception of the Fokker D.VII.

(The WOFF Camel for example is faster than the Albatros D.V - which is wrong, according

to reports from combat pilots, who told that the D.V often just ran away from approaching Camels -

well, how could they run away, when the Camel was faster?)

 

Most sim Camels don't seem to show the nasty behaviour in left turns, which must have been

so hard to perform, that the pilots prefered to do a 3/4 right turn instead.

 

The Fokker Dr. I could not perform the "flat turn" in OFF (not sure if that was changed for WOFF).

If the craft could do a flat turn, and had the same lift we could witness in this video, it would be a

real devil of a turn-fighter, and more than a match for the Camel.

Edited December 1, 2015 by Hauksbee

[JFM 18]

Yes. The fuel and oil tanks are there. You'll see the fuel gauge up front like that on several Fokker machines.

 

Here's an example:

 

 

 

[Dutch_P47M 9]

That is really cool that a Swiss Airline is flying Ju-52's. I could decipher (with my High School German) that they had four. I'm assuming these are originals? Ju-52's were common in Europe, but not in America. We had Ford Tri-motors. Henry Ford (the car industrialist) wanted to build Ju-52's under license for the American market but Hugo Junkers said 'no'. Henry didn't like saying people saying 'no' to him, so he put together a design team and simply copied the plane.

 

780_16-08-2010_19-42-01_ford_trimotor_mail_flight.jpg

 

are you sure was this not based on the Fokker trimotor plane??? 

[Hauksbee 103]

Just read in another forum, that Carlson's Dr. I flies with the original Oberursel rotary.

The Dr.1 was hot. No two ways about it. But it did have its drawbacks. First was that 110hp Oberursel engine. It was underpowered. And while the third wing gave it lift and great climb, it extracted a price in drag. The Dr.1 was slower than the new Allied fighters coming on line: SE-5, Camels, Brisfits, and once it reached it operational altitude, its performance fell off. The operational life of the Dr.1 was short, in part because the Allies quickly figured out its shortcomings and instead of engaging, simply ignored it and flew around them. Still, if anyone dropped down into the Fokker Tripe's arena it was a very dangerous opponent.

are you sure was this not based on the Fokker trimotor plane??? 

Dutch: As far as I know, the Ford Tri-motor was designed as a way to get around Hugo Junkers prohibition on licensing the Ju-52 in America. I'm sure that the design team was well aware of other similar designs, like Fokkers. More than this, I cannot say.

Jim: You always post great pictures, but so often they are 'way too big. Not long ago I posted a way to use Microsoft Paint (which comes as part of every Windows machine) to make reductions. Would you like me to post that again?

edit: Dutch: You're absolutely right. There's a very strong family resemblance there.

.

Edited December 2, 2015 by Hauksbee

[JimAttrill 24]

I don't think the Junkers was the inspiration for the Ford trimotor.   It was the Fokker FVII that got Ford thinking about a trimotor.   Unfortunately Fokker already had an American subsidiary, the Atlantic Aircraft Corporation.  So he got designer Stout on the job for him instead.

Stout did copy the Junkers corrugated metal construction though.   The Junkers JU52/1m of the time was single-engined.   The prototype JU52/3m first flew in 1932, just before the Ford trimotor ceased production in 1933. 

see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fokker_F.VII

Edited December 2, 2015 by JimAttrill

[Hauksbee 103]

The prototype JU52/3m first flew in 1932, just before the Ford trimotor ceased production in 1933. 

Good point. I am not certain where I read that Ford wanted to license the Junkers design and, being rebuffed, the Trimotor was his revenge. It was some time ago, but I suspect it was in Martin Caiden's book, "The Saga of Iron Annie". Caiden, a part-time aviation historian, bought and restored a Ju-52 (right down to its original Luftwaffe battle dress). Also, it's the only book exclusively dealing Ju-52's that I can recall having.

.

 

In the Wikipedia excerpt that follows, the authors claim that the Ford Tri-motor owed more to Junkers. In another Wiki article (on Anthony Fokker: not quoted here) it's related that Fokker moved to the United States in 1926 and formed a subsidiary company. One of his earliest designs was "The Josephine Ford", named after Henry Ford's granddaughter and was used in Admiral Byrd's flight to the South Pole. This would indicate that Ford and Fokker were on pretty good terms...which Ford and Junkers were not.

 

I've not been able to find any reference to Ford trying to get licensing rights, but he was not above plagiarism.

.

From Wikipedia:

 

The story of the Ford Trimotor began with William Bushnell Stout, an aeronautical engineer who had previously designed several aircraft using principles similar to, and originally devised by Professor Hugo Junkers, the noted German all-metal aircraft design pioneer.

 

In the early 1920s, Henry Ford, along with a group of 19 other investors including his son Edsel, invested in the Stout Metal Airplane Company. Stout, a bold and imaginative salesman, sent a mimeographed form letter to leading manufacturers, blithely asking for $1,000 and adding: "For your one thousand dollars you will get one definite promise: You will never get your money back." Stout raised $20,000, including $1,000 each from Edsel and Henry Ford,

 

In 1925, Ford bought Stout and its aircraft designs. The single-engined Stout design was turned into a multi-engined design, the Stout 3-AT with three Curtiss-Wright air-cooled radial engines. After a prototype was built and test-flown with poor results, and a suspicious fire caused the complete destruction of all previous designs, the "4-AT" and "5-AT" emerged.

 

The Ford Trimotor using all-metal construction was not a revolutionary concept, but it was certainly more advanced than the standard construction techniques of the 1920s. The aircraft resembled the Fokker F.VII Trimotor, but unlike the Fokker, the Ford was all-metal, allowing Ford to claim it was "the safest airliner around." Its fuselage and wings, following a design pioneered by Junkers during World War I with the Junkers J.I and used postwar in a series of airliners starting with the Junkers F.13 low-wing monoplane of 1920 of which a number were exported to the US, the Junkers K 16 high-wing airliner of 1921, and the Junkers G 24 trimotor of 1924, all of which were constructed of aluminum alloy, which was corrugated for added stiffness, although the resulting drag reduced its overall performance.

 

So similar were the designs that Junkers sued and won when Ford attempted to export an aircraft to Europe. In 1930, Ford countersued in Prague, and despite the possibility of anti-German sentiment, was decisively defeated a second time, with the court finding that Ford had infringed upon Junkers' patents.

Edited December 2, 2015 by Hauksbee

[JimAttrill 24]

Interesting - I didn't know about the court case that Ford lost which does show that the aircraft were very similar in manufacture. 

 

I have flown in a JU52 ZS-AFA which was the registration of a JU52 used by SAA pre-war and reused on the current Spanish CASA 325L version.  It used to fly from Joburg and Lanseria airports on alternate Sundays.  I took my French father in law up for the trip.   He was an ex para and had jumped out of a few AMIOT Toucan's in the early 50s in Senegal.   He remembers being trained by British paras who didn't speak a word of French and none of the paras spoke English!  Their parachutes were ex-Luftwaffe black and apparently landed much faster than the British chutes causing many broken legs.   Anyway he was lucky not to be sent to Indo-China as it was then. 

 

I live about 15kms from Lanseria airport and you could hear the Junkers taking off from there!   It had been reengined with Harvard motors and propellors and was extremely noisy.   I don't think it is in flying condition now as I have not heard or seen it.   Here is some info on it, note "The propeller itself is also the Hamilton Standard 12D40 as used on the Harvard, providing the unique sound that ZS-AFA has."   This is a bit of an understatement! 

 

http://www.saamuseum.co.za/our-aircraft/66-junkers-ju-52-casa-352l.html

[JFM 18]

@Hauskbee: Too big? You dislike seeing things clearly?     I use Photoshop but I am not going to reduce stellar photos to micro-size because BIG is part of their joy! At least for me. I'll email you the photo and you can reduce them to the size you prefer.

[Hauksbee 103]

 I use Photoshop but I am not going to reduce stellar photos to micro-size because BIG is part of their joy! At least for me.

No, BIG is OK. I can just drag the picture to the desktop and 2x click it there. A question though, on the Dr.1 picture above. Are the rectangular box things the magazines for the machine guns?

.

Edited December 5, 2015 by Hauksbee

[JFM 18]

Yes. On the Dr.1, for instance, one box held the ammo and the other collected the discarded metal ammo belt links. When using the hemp ammo belts the belts were collected in the bin. You see that on the Fokker Es, Albs, etc.