| C.IV | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Role | Two-seat reconnaissance aircraft Type of aircraft |
| Manufacturer | Fokker |
| First flight | 1923 |
| Introduction | 1924 |
| Primary users | Dutch Army Air Corps United States Army Air Service USSR |
| Number built | 159 |
TheFokker C.IV is a 1920sDutch two-seat reconnaissance aircraft that was designed and built byFokker.
The C.IV was developed from the earlierC.I but it was a larger and more robust aircraft. The C.IV was designed as a reconnaissancebiplane with a fixedtailwheel landing gear and was originally powered by the Napier Lionpiston engine. It had a wider fuselage and wider track of the cross-axle landing gear than the C.I.
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; theUSSR bought 55 aircraft and theUnited States Army Air Service acquired eight. Twenty aircraft were licensed built inSpain by theTalleres Loring company for the Spanish Army'sAeronáutica 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.[1]
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Data from The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Aircraft (Part Work 1982-1985), 1985, Orbis Publishing, Page 1858
General characteristics
Performance
Armament
Aircraft of comparable role, configuration, and era
Related lists
TheTacoma to Tokyo Fokker C.IVA Photographs at The Museum of Flight Digital Collections
