Junkers F 13 Rimowa / Junkers Flugzeugwerke F 13 (réplica)

The project was never about returning a historic airframe to flight — only five originals survive, all in museums — but about building new aeroplanes. Work started from the original drawings plus a laser scan of the F 13 held at the Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace at Le Bourget. The structure was made in Germany, with assembly and testing in Switzerland; each aircraft runs to some 2600 parts and tens of thousands of rivets.

The aircraft flew at the Dübendorf military airfield in September 2016, with the official maiden flight on the 15th of that month. Formal certification as an aircraft followed in 2018. By 2019 two machines were airworthy and a third was under construction; the second stayed on the Swiss register while the first was eventually sold and shipped to the United States.

The reconstruction is faithful outside and modern where flying it today demands: radio and transponder, a far fuller instrument panel, sprung landing gear, brakes and a tailwheel instead of a skid. The engine is a 1930s Pratt & Whitney R-985 Wasp Junior radial rather than a water-cooled inline, which is why the aircraft wears the look of the American JL-6, itself radial-powered.

The initiative grew out of Rimowa, whose head drove it, and ended in the Junkers Flugzeugwerke name being revived with the consent of Hugo Junkers's heirs, first at Dübendorf and later at Altenrhein. Nearly a century after the first flight of 1919, the world's first all-metal airliner was back in production — in a very short series, at collector's prices.