History
One of the first activities undertaken by Fokker after World War II was the design of a new military aircraft for initial pilot training, the S-11 Instructor. An aircraft trader already placed orders for 100 of these aircraft in 1946, before construction had even begun. The first prototype flew at Schiphol on 18 December 1947. During testing in early 1948 it was found that some aerodynamic changes had to be made to improve the handling of the aircraft. Later that year demonstration flights for several air forces followed and eventually many S-11s were sold to the Royal Netherlands Air Force, Israeli Air Force, Italian Air Force, Brazilian Air Force, Paraguayan Air Force and Bolivian Air Force. Some 170 aircraft were license built in Italy as the Macchi M.416. Numerous S-11 Instructors are still flying today. The Dutch organization Fokker Four dedicated to the preservation of the aircraft owns five S-11s and amongst other activities still performs with them on airshows. The S-11 was also produced in Brazil by a Fokker subsidiary, which also manufactured a tricycle-undercarriage variant as the S-12
Read more about this topic: Fokker S-11
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It’s not the sentiments of men which make history but their actions.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
False history gets written every day
...
the lesbian archaeologist watches herself
sifting her own life out from the shards she’s piecing,
asking the clay all questions but her own.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“It’s a very delicate surgical operation—to cut out the heart without killing the patient. The history of our country, however, is a very tough old patient, and we’ll do the best we can.”
—Dudley Nichols, U.S. screenwriter. Jean Renoir. Sorel (Philip Merivale)