Junkers F 13 F 13

The first F 13 lifted off from Dessau on 25 June 1919 with test pilot Emil Monz at the controls, powered by a water-cooled six-cylinder Mercedes D IIIa inline of roughly 127 kW turning a fixed-pitch laminated wooden propeller. It was granted an airline certificate that July — no all-metal passenger aeroplane had managed that before — and, like the earliest Junkers machines, it flew under a name of its own rather than a bare works number.

What sets this first configuration apart is the wing. The variant listing credits the prototype with a span of 14.47 m and an area of 38.9 m², both smaller than what the production machines received. The aeroplane flew well enough on that wing, but with little payload margin, and the very first modification applied to the type was to enlarge the wing and fit a more powerful engine, producing the F 13a.

The specification the literature attaches to the baseline F 13 describes a monoplane 9.59 m long and 3.50 m high, 951 kg empty and 1640 kg loaded, good for 173 km/h flat out and 160 km/h cruising, with 1400 km of range and a 5000 m ceiling. Two crew sat in a roofed but unglazed cockpit; four passengers travelled behind them in a heated, enclosed cabin fitted with seat belts, a rare courtesy in 1919.

Barely three months after the first flight, an early aircraft climbed to 6750 m carrying eight people — better than the standing world altitude record, though it was never ratified because Germany was outside the FAI at the time. Dozens of sub-types differing only in fuselage and engine were later built on this airframe, and the Junkers W 33 and W 34 grew directly out of it.