Junkers F.13 by Revell Germany

1/72 scale
Kit No. 04249
Retail: $19.99
Decals: Four versions
Comments: Early commercial airliner; detailed cockpit; above-average fit

History

Designed and built in Germany during the closing months of World War I, Junkers F.13 was the first all-metal, cantilever-wing monoplane airliner and a truly modern aircraft for its time. The designation “F” stood for Flugzeug, or aircraft, and it was Junkers’ first commercial airplane. It featured a cockpit accommodating two pilots and a fully enclosed, heated cabin seating four passengers in the same comfort to be found in automobiles of the day. Passenger seats were fitted with seatbelts, a never-before-seen innovation in motor cars, and used primarily on combat aircraft up to that time. It flew for the first time on June 25, 1919, with test pilot Emil Monz, who had served as a reconnaissance pilot during the war, at the controls. On September 13, 1919, Monz flew the second F.13, with seven passengers on board, to an altitude of 6,750 meters (22,146 feet), setting an unofficial world record.

Upon its debut, the Junkers F.13 was a very advanced aircraft. Up to that time, airplanes had primarily been built of wood, a material vulnerable to termites and susceptible to changes in dimension due to temperature and humidity, which can warp it with time. The F.13’s corrugated duralumin skin (an aluminum alloy) made it both lighter and significantly stronger than wood.

The heated passenger cabin featured both windows and doors in the fuselage sides, but the pilots climbed into the cockpit directly through openings in the fuselage. There was no onboard service nor restroom on the aircraft. The Junkers could land both on grass and on dirt fields, since at that time the airfields were simply demarcated areas. The flights were marked by turbulence (the aircraft flew quite low by modern standards) and engine’s loud noise. The flight was all visual, following references on the ground, where the names of cities written on the roofs of railway stations helped a lot. When weather conditions prevented the navigation by pilot’s vision, the flight was almost blindly: pilots were guided by a compass and a pocket watch.

The F. 13 used a fixed conventional split landing gear with a rear skid, though some variants landed on floats or on skis, and the fact that the conventional landing gear could be switched our for floats in particular added to the type’s popularity, especially in foreign sales; as of 1919-20, waterways were more readily accessible to aircraft than prepared landing fields.

The F.13 was powered by a 127 kW (170 hp) Mercedes D.IIIa inline upright water-cooled engine, which had often been the powerplant for Germany’s combat aircraft during the war. The first production machines had a wing of greater span and area and had the more powerful 140 kW (185 hp) BMW IIIa upright inline water-cooled motor.
Many variants were built using Mercedes, BMW, Junkers, and Armstrong Siddeley Puma liquid-cooled inline engines, as well as Gnome-Rhône Jupiter and Pratt & Whitney Hornet air-cooled radial engines, although the radial powered aircraft featured a redesigned nose and had a decidedly different appearance.

The Junkers F.13 was the DC-3 of its day, accounting for significant commercial export sales. 322 of the type were manufactured, an exceptionally large number for a commercial airliner of that era, and were operated all over the globe. It was in production for thirteen years and in commercial service for more than thirty, and was operated by Austria, Poland, Colombia, Bolivia, England, France, Italy, and Japan — and was even built under license in the United States by John Larsen Aircraft, and operated by the U.S. Post Office Department under the designation JL-6.

Junkers set up its own airline – Junkers Luftverkehr AG in 1921 – to encourage the acquisition of the F.13 by German airlines which was flying 60 of them by 1923. They also established a branch of this airline in Iran. Other marketing techniques were used, providing F 13s on cheap leases and free loans, with such effect that some 16 operators across Europe were flying them. When Junkers Luftverkehr merged into Lufthansa in 1926, the F.13 had flown 9.5 million miles. Lufthansa itself bought 55 aircraft and in 1928 were using them on 43 domestic routes. Even in 1937, their F.13s were flying over 50 flights per week on four routes. They were finally withdrawn from Lufthansa service in 1938.

The Kit

Revell’s Junkers F.13 is injection molded in metallic grey and consists of 56 parts, including 13 clear parts for the cabin windows and dual cockpit windshields, along with a further 18 parts for the floats associated with the seaplane version. There is a bit of warping of the fuselage parts, but this is common to Revell molds and usually easily cured with a little hot water and pressure (bending). All parts are crisply molded. The cockpit features dual control yokes and rudder pedals for the pilots who sit in tandem seats, and there is a decal for the instrument panel, a bit of a disappointment given the cabin detail to be seen elsewhere. With the exception of the fuselage assembly (see Construction section below), the fit of most parts is excellent.

Construction

With the exception of the fuselage, this kit fell together as though manufactured by Tamiya. It is for the most part remarkably well engineered, and most parts fit together with near perfection. The fit was generally well above average. The cockpit was nicely detailed (again, separate parts for the seats, control yokes and rudder pedals) and the passenger cabin had a nice bit of detail in the form of curtains molded onto its forward bulkhead, which also provided a window to see through into the cockpit — but no door. This kit is interesting and unorthodox for a passenger liner, because the passengers entered the cabin via doors on both sides of the fuselage, but the pilots apparently climbed into the cockpit via the openings behind the diminutive windscreens, their edges covered with padded leather coaming — not unlike climbing into the combat aircraft of World War I.

The fuselage, however, was an unusual box-like rectanguloid structure, a departure from the traditional two halves in that separate parts were provided for the relatively flat dorsal surface (the “roof”) running almost the entire length of the fuselage, and for the underside of the nose. The roof part was the biggest challenge. It was slightly warped and refused to fit flush with the fuselage sides even after being exposed to mildly hot water and bent afterward. The heat and bending helped, but there was still a visible gap that I filled with Tamiya putty. The propeller was well-proportioned, to scale, and presented no problems, and the landing gear are fairly well detailed and unlike many gear from kits from this era, went together with a minimum of fuss.

Painting

The Junkers F.13 is mostly airbrushed in Tamiya acrylics: a base color of XF-56 Metallic Grey with X-18 Semi-Gloss Black for the nose and wing flashes. I was able to re-create the curvature of the nose flash with the help of 4″ Kabuki tape, which made masking a breeze. The wingtips and leading edge of the vertical tail are done in Humbrol Gloss Red, an enamel. The interior cabin and exposed cockpit were brush painted in Humbrol enamels, Pale Stone walls and floors, Wine Red for the rear cockpit bulkhead ribbing, and all seats were painted Satin Brown.

Markings

For the decals I chose the German version, (code letters D – 202) for a machine of the “Deutsche Versuchsanstalt fur Luftfarht” or Berlin Flight Test Center, Berlin-Adlerhof, 1928. They went on with relative ease but due to the corrugated surface of the airframe, they required repeated applications of Micro Sol and Tamiya Mark Fit in order to snuggle down into the multiple grooves. The corrugated surface also presented the challenge of multiple air pockets which led to silvering. Repeated applications and pressure with a Q-tip eliminated most of them.

Decals are provided for four additional versions of the F.13, one Swiss, one Danziger, one German, and one Austrian. The German version (code letters D – 202) is for a machine of the “Deutsche Versuchsanstalt fur Luftfarht” or Berlin Flight Test Center, Berlin-Adlerhof, 1928. The Austrian version is for Osterreichische Luftverkehrs AG – OLAG (Austrian Airlines, code letters A-3) from September 1923 and is a floatplane version, although a landplane version of this aircraft can be selected and was based at Wien, circa 1924. Both the German and Austrian aircraft are painted overall Metallic Grey, with Black flashes on the nose, wings, and on the ventral surfaces of the elevators.

The Danziger version requires some explanation. During the period that the Junkers F.13 was at the height of its service, Danzig was a city-state under the protection of the League of Nations (1920-1939), and consisted of the Baltic Sea port of Danzig and nearly 200 other small localities in the surrounding areas. The machine depicted by the decals is an aircraft of Lloyd Ostflug, code letters Dz.40, and was flown by the Danziger Luftpost, which translates to Gdańsk Airmail, circa 1923. It is painted overall Metallic Grey, with Black flashes on the nose and on the ventral surfaces of the elevators, with red flashes along the spine of the fuselage and wings.

The Swiss version is a machine of AD ASTRA, the Swiss airline that would later become SwissAir, and was based at Zurich, Switzerland, circa 1922. It is painted overall Metallic Grey, with Black flashes on the nose and belly, and red flashes on the wings.

Conclusion

This is a great kit of one of the earliest and most modern airliners, which pointed the way to aircraft such as the Junkers Ju 52, the Ford Tri-Motor and the Boeing 247. It is amazing to think that any country produced a passenger-carrying monoplane with a heated cabin as far back as 1919, barely a year after World War I. The Junkers F.13 is highly recommended for ease of construction and historical significance.

References

• wikipedia.org
• https://www.varig-airlines.com/en/junkersf13.htm
• https://www.avbuyer.com/articles/ga-buyer-europe/what-makes-the-junkers-f13-a-first-of-its-kind-112462