Junkers F 13
The Junkers F 13 was a German single-engine airliner that first flew on 25 June 1919 and became the first all-metal transport aircraft to enter production service worldwide. Its corrugated duralumin skin, cantilever wing and enclosed cabin for four passengers set the pattern that airliners have followed since. Production is most often put at 322 aircraft, built at Dessau and under licence abroad, and at the type's mid-1920s peak it was estimated to be carrying some 40 percent of world air traffic. Five originals survive in museums, and a flying reproduction returned the type to the air in 2016.
Why It Mattered
When the Junkers F 13 first flew on 25 June 1919, it stood apart from every other passenger aircraft of its day: an all-metal monoplane in an age of wood-and-canvas biplanes. Vintage Aviation News calls it the world's first all-metal transport plane to enter mass production and worldwide service. The Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace at Le Bourget, which displays an original, calls it the first modern transport aircraft. It was designed by Otto Reuter, Hugo Junkers' chief designer at Dessau. Within a few years it was flying with airlines across the world, and Vintage Aviation News estimates that by 1925 F 13s were carrying some 40 percent of global air traffic.
Design Notes
The F 13 was built of duralumin throughout, its skin corrugated sheet riveted over the spars and struts of wing and fuselage. Its wing needed no external bracing: the structure was carried inside a thick cantilever section, so the aeroplane lacked the stay-wires that dragged on its contemporaries. Two pilots sat in a semi-open cockpit, ahead of an enclosed cabin that carried four passengers. The fixed undercarriage could be exchanged for floats or skis to suit local conditions. Engines varied across the many variants; many F 13s flew with Junkers' own L5 six-cylinder inline engine.
Operational History
Most F 13s were built by Junkers at Dessau, and the type was also produced under licence in Sweden, the Soviet Union and the United States. Wikipedia's accounting puts total production at 322 aircraft; Vintage Aviation News gives the rounder figure of over 300. Junkers founded its own airline, Junkers Luftverkehr, in 1921 to promote the type and was flying 60 of them by 1923. When that airline merged into Deutsche Luft Hansa in 1926, the F 13 passed to the new carrier, which bought 55 and was using them on 43 domestic routes in 1928. Operators spread far beyond Germany: the type was flown as far afield as Afghanistan, Bolivia, South Africa and Hungary. The F 13 also provided the basis for Junkers' later single-engine transports, the W 33 and W 34. Commercial service lasted more than thirty years: the last commercial F 13 was retired in Brazil in 1951.
Afterlife
Only five original F 13s survive, all of them in museums. The Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace displays construction number 609 at Le Bourget, one of a batch of seven seized as war reparations. The Deutsches Museum's aircraft was one of two sold to King Amanullah of Afghanistan in 1928; found on a Kabul scrapyard in the 1960s, it was flown back to Germany in June 1969 and, after restoration, went on display in Munich in 1984. The museum notes that which of the two Afghan aircraft it holds can no longer be determined. The Canadian survivor, wrecked in British Columbia in 1933 and recovered in 1981, returned to the Royal Aviation Museum of Western Canada in September 2024 after restoration in Europe. The type flies again in reproduction form: a newly built F 13, its construction helped by a laser scan of the Le Bourget original, made its first flight at Dübendorf on 15 September 2016.