Registered 13 April 1921 and delivered to KLM the same day. Suffered engine failure and made an emergency landing on the Goodwin Sands 19 Oct.1923 with an incoming tide. The four occupants were rescued by a passing cargo ship but the aircraft was lost to the sea. Cancelled 13 Nov.1923. In the background is Farman F.60 Goliath F-ADDT (c/n.6935-228) of the Cie.des Grands Expresses Aeriennes, later to Air Union as 'Languedoc' and withdrawn from use 7 Dec.1932. (The power check against the chocks with the 'ground crew' holding the tail down adds to the atmosphere, albeit a polluted one!).

H-NABS (c/ n 1531) did not enter service with KLM but was sold to the Deutsche Luft-Reederei/Danziger Luft-Reederei along with H-NABR (c/n 1530), which may be the plane on the ground below the chimney. H-NABS (c/n 1531) to FD-21 and Dz-8 in the Free City of Danzig register. The transfers already took place in 1920 according to some sources but this is ruled out by Dutch register information. Also the F.III did not fly until 20 November 1920. The airport was known as Langfuhr in German times. Wrzeszc closed in 1974 and remains of the airport are still clearly visible in the Zaspa district of Gdánsk. Photo from: ETH-Bibliothek Zürich

'Landing in Köningsberg - Devau, coming from Moscow, Smolensk and Kowno [Kaunas]'. This was the first scheduled route flown by German-Soviet airline Deruluft from May 1922. Its Fokker F.IIIs had mostly been completed at the Fokker plant in Veere, Netherlands. Photo from: ETH-Bibliothek Zürich

The Paris Air Show used to be held indoors. The participation of the Nederlandsche Vliegtuigenfabriek, better known as Fokker, in the 1921 event was very unpopular among the French public. This did not stop Anthony Fokker from displaying the glider on the left, said to have been designed in Germany as a flying bomb, to be towed by a D.VII. This is unconfirmed, however. Note the model plane on top of the glider. Although painted in full KLM colours, the F.III here never flew for KLM. It was handed over to the Hungarian airline, Malért, here in Paris. H-NABA was alphabetically the first entry in the Netherlands register, but CoR number 23. Photo from: Amsterdam City Archives

Some Fokker F.IIIs - including KLM's final pair, H-NABU and NABV - were parasol planes with the wing raised about 1 ft above the fuselage. The pilot moved from the right to the left side of the engine as air traffic was now supposed to keep to the right. Photo from: J Koolen collection

The F.III was a notable early airliner of which some 66 examples were built. Uniquely the pilot sat alongside the slightly offset engine, 'burning on one side and freezing on the other'. Used by then for sightseeing flights, this airframe was lost on 24 July 1928 here at Rotterdam when the pilot made too short a take-off run, hit a ship's masts and crashed into the Waalhaven harbour. One of the passengers drowned. Photo from: Amsterdam City Archives