Fokker XXI as a Joint Anglo-Dutch project?

Both countries were expressing the need for a simple fighter for overseas service (of course, that was not proceeded with due to the realities of late 1930s). So, for sake of discussion, lets have Dutch and British co-operate in this task, and come out with an aircraft that is pretty much like historical Fokker XXI in 1936. For the British, the Bristol company is involved.
What might be the shortcomings and benefits of this cooperation? Refinement and growth potential of the basic design? Alternative powerplants in the next 5-6 years? Other countries chipping in?

Looking at this from the viewpoint of a Dutch politician in, say, 1933 (when the process would start) It would be considered antithetical to the country's neutrality, which had kept it away from the worst of the horrors of the Great War.

Of course, Dutch defense spending was woefully inadequate, and too little to protect its colonial possessions against any kind of external threat.

I am not sure who in Great Britain was expressing a "need" for a simple fighter for overseas service. Someone may have been but you can find idiots everywhere.
I have been over this a number of times, the "simple" fighter is cheap (appealing ot bean counters and politicians) because It is only cheap because it is inferior when built compared to more expensive fighters. It becomes very expensive indeed if you actually have to use them in combat.
Cheap looks good when making up numbers before combat (peacetime) or if total purchases are low.

Which is really cheaper, 600 first line fighters and 300 2nd line fighters or 900 first line fighters all ordered at once and not in dribs and drabs?
what will be the cost over 3-4 years of service in spare parts/meaintence/training.
Granted such thinking took a while to develop (and even now is skipped in favor of thinking about "this years budget" and not the budget over the next few years)

Perhaps my view is skewed from my time in the fire service. Back in the late 70s and 80s they was a big fad for "refurbishing" fire trucks to save money. In some cases it may have been money well spent, in too many cases it was throwing good money after bad. Especially if the company that did the "referb" was not the company that built the truck in the first place.
We had two ladder trucks where they jacked up the ladder turntable and slid a new truck underneath and called it a "refurb". Trouble was in both cases you had an old ladder mechanism and an old ladder (1980/90s and we were climbing a 1948 ladder until it flunked a test). Then what ever went wrong was the other companies fault. Chassis company blamed any problems with ladder operation on the company that built the ladder, Ladder company blamed the chassis company.

Sorry, but intentionally building "cheap" only works if your potential opponents also build "cheap". Something you cannot be assured of.

Shortround6 said:

I am not sure who in Great Britain was expressing a "need" for a simple fighter for overseas service. Someone may have been but you can find idiots everywhere.

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Seems like Air Ministry expressed the need, in a written form, under the specification F.5/34.

tomo pauk said:

Both countries were expressing the need for a simple fighter for overseas service (of course, that was not proceeded with due to the realities of late 1930s). So, for sake of discussion, lets have Dutch and British co-operate in this task, and come out with an aircraft that is pretty much like historical Fokker XXI in 1936. For the British, the Bristol company is involved.
What might be the shortcomings and benefits of this cooperation? Refinement and growth potential of the basic design? Alternative powerplants in the next 5-6 years? Other countries chipping in?

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Hi

I am not sure what the Fokker D.XXI actually brings to the table for the British. It is an aircraft that first flew after both the Hurricane and the Spitfire and provided a lower performance and poorer armament than both. Any potential for growth may ultimately bring in a performance close to the Hurricane 1 so why not just produce Hurricanes? Fokker would not be able to supply Britain with enough aircraft meaning that if they were built in the UK they would be taken up valuable factory space that could be building Hurricanes/Spitfires etc. Overseas aircraft designs bought by the British were to add to British production not to replace British production. Aircraft bought from the USA from 1938 by the UK included not just payments for aircraft but money to expand the US factories to produce them. The UK was spending a lot of money in the mid to late 1930s to expand British factories and also US factories, I doubt paying to expand Dutch factories would ever be on the cards especially with the political problems already mentioned, let alone the money that was available to the UK stretching that far.

Mike

tomo pauk said:

Seems like Air Ministry expressed the need, in a written form, under the specification F.5/34.

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Ok, where in the specification does it say "Simple fighter for overseas service" emphasis is mine.

from wiki so could be very wrong.

"The aircraft was developed for Air Ministry Specification F.5/34, a fighter armed with eight machine guns and an air-cooled engine that was well-suited to operations in the tropics "

Emphasis is again mine. Air cooled engine does not mean the rest of the aircraft is "simple" and indeed all the contenders used the standard eight gun armament, they all used retractable landing gear, they all used the standard RAF equipement of the day (instruments, radios, landing flares)

Also, please remember that in the early 30s glycol coolant was just entering service, and many nations were issuing requirements for air cooled engines in all sorts of equipement (tanks/trucks) to reduce the need (or perceived need) for water in "tropical" (read dessert) conditions. The Early PV 12 engine used water as did the Kestrel. The systems were not sealed and the water could and did evaporate to some extent.

If some of our friends have the actual text of the specification it would be helpful.

Shortround6 said:

Ok, where in the specification does it say "Simple fighter for overseas service" emphasis is mine.

from wiki so could be very wrong.

"The aircraft was developed for Air Ministry Specification F.5/34, a fighter armed with eight machine guns and an air-cooled engine that was well-suited to operations in the tropics "

Emphasis is again mine. Air cooled engine does not mean the rest of the aircraft is "simple" and indeed all the contenders used the standard eight gun armament, they all used retractable landing gear, they all used the standard RAF equipement of the day (instruments, radios, landing flares)

...

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Okay, so it is a fighter well-suited for opeartions in the tropics.

MikeMeech said:

I am not sure what the Fokker D.XXI actually brings to the table for the British.

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It was pretty much a four gun fighter with a 174 sq ft wing.
Perhaps the Dutch cheated and used a two pitch or variable pitch prop?
As is one source says 77 gallons of fuel but does not say IMP or US gallons.

Needing 24 fighters to get the same number of guns within range of a bomber formation (with a bit more ammo) than 12 British fighters does not seem like a good bargain.

tomo pauk said:

Okay, so it is a fighter well-suited for opeartions in the tropics.

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Which is different than a cheap or simple fighter.
Once they went to glycol coolant with it's higher boiling point they somewhat sealed the system and losses to evaporation went down. As planes were better built the number of coolant leaks went down. Many early 30s specifications were written with the experience of the 20s and WW I era engines firmly in mind with their all too common water leaks from assorted sources. Many high ranking officers in the air ministry having served in the mid east in the 20s with surplus WW I aircraft/engines or the next generation aircraft and derived engines when they were junior officers.

A 300 mph radial engine fighter doesn't look too bad against a 320mph Hurricane, Once the Spitfire and 109E show up at over 350mph then all bets are off.

Don't have the full text to F.5/34, but if I were to build one of the aircraft entered to it, I'd go for the Vickers Venom and not waste time on the Fokker. It was an excellent little aircraft and had quite modern features, such as electrically operated systems, and performance wise it could do better than a Hurricane. Its primary disadvantage was that it was underpowered.

Nonetheless, like Mike says, why not build more Hurricanes? An initial order for 600 was placed, which was at the time the biggest single order for any British aircraft to date.

If you want a round engine fighter for the tropics tell Hawkers to design a Hurricane with a Hercules. They wouldn't be able to build it but it could be passed onto another manufacturer.

fastmongrel said:

If you want a round engine fighter for the tropics tell Hawkers to design a Hurricane with a Hercules. They wouldn't be able to build it but it could be passed onto another manufacturer.

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I do like Hercules Hurricane. Problem with that idea to fly as early as 1936 is that Hercules is not available.

A better idea would have been Vickers powering the Venom with a Mercury. 6 not 8 guns, but underwing attachments for either drop tanks or bombs. So no need for Mohawk or Buffalo in the Far East.

swampyankee said:

Looking at this from the viewpoint of a Dutch politician in, say, 1933 (when the process would start) It would be considered antithetical to the country's neutrality, which had kept it away from the worst of the horrors of the Great War.

Of course, Dutch defense spending was woefully inadequate, and too little to protect its colonial possessions against any kind of external threat.

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I like the idea. It's using a British Bristol engine and de Havilland (licensed Hamilton) propeller. Might as well go full Monty and build it together. Make it an empire fighter, for India, Malaya, ANZ, etc.

And build a FAA version. You don't even need folding wings, as the Fokker's 36 ft wingspan will fit down every carriers' lift save Ark Royal and the three Illustrious class. Folding wings can be designed later to accommodate these four carriers.

MikeMeech said:

I am not sure what the Fokker D.XXI actually brings to the table for the British.

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We need to consider what the Fokker D.XXI brought to the Dutch and if these benefits could also benefit Britain. Why didn't the Dutch build something akin to the Hurricane or Spitfire? Fokker was relatively competitive with the other European firms and should have been able to make something comparable. Was the D.XXI cheaper, easier or faster to build? Would it be also for the Brits, perhaps to produce offshore?

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Admiral Beez said:

I can't get my head around the utility of these contrarian posts. Why not post a separate thread promoting the Venom instead of dismissing and re-directing swampyankee 's thread?

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This isn't my thread; I didn't start it.

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Back to the politics of jointness. Now, combat aircraft development can be hideously expensive (I'm looking at you, F-35, but also at the F-22, Eurofighter Typhoon, Panavia Tornado, Jaguar, AMX, ....), but that wasn't the case in the 1930s, where companies would actually develop modern combat aircraft on their own nickel. I can't think of any truly international combat aircraft development program in the 1930s (this doesn't mean there weren't any, just that I'm not aware of them if they existed. There were, of course, international sales, licensing, cross-licensing, and feedback between licensees and licensors). The British aircraft and engine industry were ahead of the Dutch industry by a significant margin (there wasn't much beyond Fokker, and its designs were far from cutting edge at this time), but the incentive for international programs -- high development costs -- did not exist.

One important consideration is why an imperial power would build "colonial" aircraft: it wasn't to deal with external threats, but internal ones, like independence movements, anti-imperial protesters, and tax evaders (when my father was in WW2, he reported of the first things the Dutch authorities did at the end of the war was shutdown trade between Americans and natives. The PT boat crews were buying produce from the locals. One day he and some other sailors went to meet up for a market, and the Dutch officer said [paraphrasing] "any more sales go through me; you aren't allowed to trade directly with the people"). A low performance fighter, like the Fokker D.XXI was more than adequate for shooting up the locals; the Dutch seemed unconcerned about an external threat to their empire, at least until far too late (yes, I know they bought a couple of cruisers and submarines and the Koninklijke Marine had a strong presence in the NEI. They were enough to enforce neutrality against a major power, but weren't enough to contest an invasion by one) While the British were the largest imperial power, they also knew that they had a high likelihood of a direct confrontation with a major power. Indeed, they had such a confrontation in WW1, in East Africa (where an estimated 700,000 civilians died, many because of food seizures von Lettow-Vorbeck) and a major fear was the threat by Russia against their hegemony in India (yes, I mean Russia, not the USSR or the bolsheviks).

Hmmm, what can the Fokker XXI bring the British?
Steel tube fuselage covered in metal at the front and fabric from the cockpit back, well the Hurricane gives them that.

Wooden wing spars and ribs covered in metal? Might beat the Hurricane with fabric wings, but certainly not an improvement on the metal wing Hurricane.

The British had made a deliberate policy decision to NOT use wood for structural airframe parts at the end of the 20s. They did make a few exceptions for trainers during the 30s but is what until they faced a possible aluminum shortage that they changed the stance on combat aircraft.

British can buy the wooden wing, the steel tube fuselage, and fit a british designed landing gear, British engine, British guns,

what, again, are the British getting out of this deal?

Shortround6 said:

Hmmm, what can the Fokker XXI bring the British?
Steel tube fuselage covered in metal at the front and fabric from the cockpit back, well the Hurricane gives them that.

Wooden wing spars and ribs covered in metal? Might beat the Hurricane with fabric wings, but certainly not an improvement on the metal wing Hurricane.

The British had made a deliberate policy decision to NOT use wood for structural airframe parts at the end of the 20s. They did make a few exceptions for trainers during the 30s but is what until they faced a possible aluminum shortage that they changed the stance on combat aircraft.

British can buy the wooden wing, the steel tube fuselage, and fit a british designed landing gear, British engine, British guns,

what, again, are the British getting out of this deal?

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An aircraft with lower performance than their contemporary monoplane fighter for not much less money. They're better off buying more Hurricanes.

I do agree with the majority of the people in the thread here. I don't believe the UK would gain anything by buying the D.XXI.

one thing to note though is that Fokker was working on the next version, equipped with either a RR Merlin or a DB601 and a retractable gear. With the Merlin, performance was estimated to be slightly better than that of the hurricane mk.1. It never came to be as by that time both engines were not available anymore. If one asks why the Dutch did not build higher performance aircraft, there is your answer. They lacked the industry to build the right parts , especially engines and were dependent on other countries. As for the D.XXI not being on par with the BF109 our Hurricane, then D.XXI was a decent aircraft for its time At that time, the most modern French fighter was the D.500/510. I would take the D.XXI over that any time

Shortround6 said:

It was pretty much a four gun fighter with a 174 sq ft wing.
Perhaps the Dutch cheated and used a two pitch or variable pitch prop?

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Correct, it was a 2 speed propellor on the Dutch D.XXI.

Marcel said:

I do agree with the majority of the people in the thread here. I don't believe the UK would gain anything by buying the D.XXI.

one thing to note though is that Fokker was working on the next version, equipped with either a RR Merlin or a DB601 and a retractable gear. With the Merlin, performance was estimated to be slightly better than that of the hurricane mk.1. It never came to be as by that time both engines were not available anymore. If one asks why the Dutch did not build higher performance aircraft, there is your answer. They lacked the industry to build the right parts , especially engines and were dependent on other countries. As for the D.XXI not being on par with the BF109 our Hurricane, then D.XXI was a decent aircraft for its time At that time, the most modern French fighter was the D.500/510. I would take the D.XXI over that any time


Correct, it was a 2 speed propellor on the Dutch D.XXI.

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More of a poke at the British for still using fixed pitch props at this time

Fokker was developing new models but how far removed from the D XXI is certainly subject to question.
The XXI was certainly not a bad plane in 1936. However by 1938-39 it was certainly no longer 1st rate. It might have worked against the Ki 27 or the A5M but as soon as any opponent shows up with a retracting landing gear fighter and a decent two row radial the XXI is in trouble, such was the rate of aviation progress back then.