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The Fokker C.IV was a 1920s
Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...
two-seat reconnaissance aircraft designed and built by
Fokker Fokker was a Dutch aircraft manufacturer named after its founder, Anthony Fokker. The company operated under several different names. It was founded in 1912 in Berlin, Germany, and became famous for its fighter aircraft in World War I. In 1919 ...
.


Design and development

The C.IV was developed from the earlier C.I but it was a larger and more robust aircraft. The C.IV was designed as a reconnaissance
biplane A biplane is a fixed-wing aircraft with two main wings stacked one above the other. The first powered, controlled aeroplane to fly, the Wright Flyer, used a biplane wing arrangement, as did many aircraft in the early years of aviation. While ...
with a fixed
tailwheel landing gear Conventional landing gear, or tailwheel-type landing gear, is an aircraft undercarriage consisting of two main wheels forward of the center of gravity and a small wheel or skid to support the tail.Crane, Dale: ''Dictionary of Aeronautical Terms ...
and was originally powered by the Napier Lion
piston engine A reciprocating engine, also often known as a piston engine, is typically a heat engine that uses one or more reciprocating pistons to convert high temperature and high pressure into a rotating motion. This article describes the common featu ...
. It had a wider fuselage and wider track of the cross-axle landing gear than the C.I.


Operational history

Examples of the C.IV were delivered to both the Dutch Army Air Corps (30 aircraft) and the Dutch East Indies Army (10 aircraft). It was also exported; the
USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
bought 55 aircraft and the
United States Army Air Service The United States Army Air Service (USAAS)Craven and Cate Vol. 1, p. 9 (also known as the ''"Air Service"'', ''"U.S. Air Service"'' and before its legislative establishment in 1920, the ''"Air Service, United States Army"'') was the aerial war ...
acquired eight. Twenty aircraft were licensed built in
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by the
Talleres Loring Talleres Loring (Loring Workshops) was a Spanish aeronautical company founded by engineer and entrepreneur Jorge Loring after moving to Madrid. History A predecessor company, Loring Pujol y Cia, had been founded in Barcelona by Jorge Loring ...
company for the Spanish Army's '' Aeronáutica Militar''. After service as reconnaissance machines the aircraft were then operated as trainers into the 1930s. The last flying example of a C.IV is C.IVa s/n4127/''N439FK'' with a Rolls-Royce Eagle VIII engine, preserved at the Owls Head Transportation Museum in Owls Head, Maine. It was used in a trans-Pacific attempt in the late 1920s or early 1930s. Pilots Bob Wark and Eddie Brown took out the seats in the passenger compartment and installed a large fuel tank. They also put a small cockpit just in front of the vertical stabilizer with a hand-powered fuel pump inside. In flight, the crew member sitting there would transfer fuel to the main tank in the wing, where it would be fed by gravity into the engine. In this trans-Pacific attempt they planned not to go straight across the Pacific but up the West Coast of North America to Alaska and down the chain of Aleutian Islands, proceeding down the Chinese coast to Tokyo. They took off from Tacoma, Washington and started to head north, but made it only about 100 miles of the way to Vancouver, British Columbia when the engine vapor locked and forced a landing in a field. They had to dump most of their fuel to bring down the weight in order to take off from the field. When they got back in the air, they started heading for nearby Ladner Field, Vancouver to top off the tanks, but they crashed upon landing and decided to give up. They loaded the C.IV onto a Ford AA flatbed truck and brought it back to Washington State. It ended up in Ephrata, Washington, where it was kept outdoors and was eventually badly burned in a grass fire. It sat until 1970, when one of the museum's trustees found it and restored it and donated it to the museum.


Variants

;C.IV :Production version with a 336 kW (450 hp)
Napier Lion The Napier Lion is a 12-cylinder, petrol-fueled 'broad arrow' W12 configuration aircraft engine built by D. Napier & Son from 1917 until the 1930s. A number of advanced features made it the most powerful engine of its day and kept it in produ ...
engine. ;C.IVA :A reduced wing-span version (12.50 m/41 ft) and reduced takeoff weight. Built for the Dutch East Indies Army. powered by a
Rolls-Royce Eagle VIII The Rolls-Royce Eagle was the first aircraft engine to be developed by Rolls-Royce Limited. Introduced in 1915 to meet British military requirements during World War I, it was used to power the Handley Page Type O bombers and a number of ...
V-12 engine ;C.IVB :As C.IV but using a
Rolls-Royce Eagle The Rolls-Royce Eagle was the first aircraft engine to be developed by Rolls-Royce Limited. Introduced in 1915 to meet British military requirements during World War I, it was used to power the Handley Page Type O bombers and a number of oth ...
or
Liberty L-12 The Liberty L-12 is an American water-cooled 45° V-12 aircraft engine displacing and making designed for a high power-to-weight ratio and ease of mass production. It saw wide use in aero applications, and, once marinized Marinisation (also m ...
engine. ;C.IVC :Long-range reconnaissance version with extended
wingspan The wingspan (or just span) of a bird or an airplane is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777–200 has a wingspan of , and a wandering albatross (''Diomedea exulans'') caught in 1965 had a wingspan of ...
(14.27 m/46 ft). ;C.IV-W :Extended wingspan as C.IVC and fitted with twin-floats and
Napier Lion The Napier Lion is a 12-cylinder, petrol-fueled 'broad arrow' W12 configuration aircraft engine built by D. Napier & Son from 1917 until the 1930s. A number of advanced features made it the most powerful engine of its day and kept it in produ ...
engine. ;C.IVH :Special version for a flight between
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and
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in 1924. ;XCO-4 :United States Army designation for three aircraft for evaluation. ;CO-4A :United States Army designation for five production aircraft powered by 313 kW (420 hp)
Liberty L-12A The Liberty L-12 is an American water-cooled 45° V-12 aircraft engine displacing and making designed for a high power-to-weight ratio and ease of mass production. It saw wide use in aero applications, and, once marinized, in marine use both i ...
engine and fuselage extended by 24 cm (9½ in). ;AO-1 :United States Army designation for an artillery spotting version modified from one of the XCO-4s


Operators

; *
Dutch Air Force , colours = , colours_label = , march = ''Parade March of the Royal Netherlands Air Force'' , mascot = , anniversaries = , equipment ...
; * ''Aeronáutica Militar'' ; *
United States Army Air Service The United States Army Air Service (USAAS)Craven and Cate Vol. 1, p. 9 (also known as the ''"Air Service"'', ''"U.S. Air Service"'' and before its legislative establishment in 1920, the ''"Air Service, United States Army"'') was the aerial war ...
; *
Soviet Air Force The Soviet Air Forces ( rus, Военно-воздушные силы, r=Voyenno-vozdushnyye sily, VVS; literally "Military Air Forces") were one of the air forces of the Soviet Union. The other was the Soviet Air Defence Forces. The Air Forces ...


Specifications (C.IV)


See also


References


Notes


Bibliography

* * * John Andrade, U.S.Military Aircraft Designations and Serials since 1909, Midland Counties Publications, 1979, (Pages 40 and 98) * The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aircraft (Part Work 1982-1985), 1985, Orbis Publishing, Page 1858 {{Loring aircraft 1920s Dutch military reconnaissance aircraft C 04 Biplanes Single-engined tractor aircraft Aircraft first flown in 1923