12/31/2012. Remarks by Johan Visschedijk: "The first Fokker F.VIII appeared in 1927, powered by two 425 hp Bristol Jupiter-engines, with seating for fifteen passengers. KLM put seven of the eight Dutch-built aircraft into service and the eighth was flown by the Hungarian airline Malert (Magyar Légiforgalmi RT). An additional three for Malert were built under license by Manfred Weiss at Budapest, Hungary.

In Britain, Geoffrey Dorman (a well-known pilot and author) wrote enthusiastically: 'The cabin is the finest thing of its kind yet seen. The effect is that of being in a comfortable room rather than being made to sit in a corridor, which is the effect in most machines. Comfortable and roomy armchairs rather like the old Alhambra stalls are fitted, and the whole effect is one of Dutch roominess and solidity which cannot fail to inspire its occupants with a feeling of safety.'

KLM over the course of years favored the F.VIII and when the license-built Gnome & Rhône Jupiters became outdated, the airframes were in such good condition that they were given a new lease of life with the latest type of American engines; first with two Pratt & Whitney Hornets, then with Wright Cyclones, and later with Pratt & Whitney Wasps. The shape of the engine-nacelles was altered in consequence, and the F.VIII was the first KLM aircraft to be fitted with a Townend-ring and later the NACA cowling.

A more radical alteration was performed on the sixth F.VIII. Initially this aircraft was delivered to KLM on May 1, 1928, registered H-NAEH, which was reregistered in the new 'PH' country code for the Netherlands as PH-AEH on February 28, 1929. In 1933, two 690 hp Wright R-1820-F2 Cyclones were integrated into the wings at the Fokker works (as a study project for the planned four-engined machines F.XXII and F.XXXVI), and the aircraft was redesignated F.VIIIa.

PH-AEH was reregistered PH-OTO (as pictured above) on November 9, 1936, when it started service with KLM's 'Fototechnische Dienst', the airline's photographic service. (This was the second KLM aircraft registered PH-OTO, the first was a Fokker F.VIIa, the third an Auster J/1 Autocrat.) On the start of WW II, the aircraft was leased by the Dutch military service in September 1939, and was serialed 951. It was destroyed by German bombs at Waalhaven airfield on May 10, 1940, at the start of the invasion of the Netherlands.

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In the early 1930s, Fokker aircraft predominated on the European air routes and were well represented in other spheres. Of 596 landplanes in services on the various European airways in 1933, no fewer than 172 were Fokkers; the remaining 424 were made up of 32 different makes. Second in importance came Junkers with 114 machines and third the French Latécoères with 81 machines. But, whereas seventy of the 114 Junkers were used in Germany and all 81 French machines were in the service of a French company Lignes Aériennes Latécoère, only forty of the 172 Fokkers were held by Dutch companies; 132 Fokkers were held by sixteen foreign enterprises all over the world. Of seventeen European countries operating landplanes, thirteen used Fokkers.

By 1932 no less than seventeen firms or national establishments had obtained license to build Fokker aircraft, a world record that still remains today. Nor is it likely that sensational record flights with aircraft of a single manufacturer will ever again capture the headlines as did the three-engined Fokkers in the years 1925-1930 when they spanned oceans and flew over the inaccessible land tracts, even the remote North Pole."