Work on the Fokker D.XXIII fighter began at the end of 1937 under the leadership of Marius Biling, and structurally this aircraft was a completely new development. The main innovation was the tandem arrangement of the engines in the fuselage, which made it possible to obtain more power from the power plant with its small midship. Two beams with keels and rudders were attached to the low-lying cantilever wing of a wooden structure, the keels were interconnected by a stabilizer. Another innovation ahead of its time is the fully retractable nose-mounted landing gear. By that time, the installation of a closed lantern had already become standard. All this made it possible to achieve high flight speeds.

However, the power plant of the aircraft consisted of two low-power liquid-cooled engines Walter Sagitta I-SR development of Walter Major 6, 12-cylinder V-shaped air-cooled, 450 hp.

The first flight of the Fokker D.XXIII took place on May 30, 1939. The characteristic problems of the pusher propeller scheme immediately appeared - a strong overheating of the rear engine, plus the impossibility of an emergency exit from the aircraft, and in addition to the entire power plant capacity of a thousand hp. the car with a takeoff weight of almost three tons was clearly not enough.

In November 1939, tests began, which basically confirmed the correctness of the chosen path, but numerous "childhood diseases", which took a long time to eliminate, did not allow the fighter to be put into mass production before the start of the German invasion. In total, the Fokker D.XXIII performed 11 flights with a total flight time of 4 hours.

On May 10, 1940, on the day of the German attack on the Netherlands, the Fokker D-XXIII was in Schiphol at the Fokker plant, where it was damaged during a German bombing raid. After the announcement of the armistice, the Germans showed great interest in the D-XXIII, Walter Sagitta engines were exported to Germany. This scheme was subsequently used by the Japanese when developing their high-altitude fighter Tachikawa Ki-94 , however, in this case, it was supposed to install powerful engines on it air cooling.

The Japanese tried to solve the problem of safely leaving the aircraft by shooting the rear propeller blades and using the lower hatch in the niche of the front landing gear. In this case, the doors of the main landing gear legs should have been closed after their release.

Photo	Description
	Drawing Fokker D.XXIII
	Fokker D.XXIII

Bibliography

• Fighter Fokker D.XXIII / Andrey Krumkach. /
• Alternative History. Experienced fighter Fokker D-XXIII / Ivan Byakin. /

December 05, 2019
In those years, pilots did not like to fly with an engine installed behind their backs. The pilots were confident that in the event of an emergency landing, they would be crushed between the front and rear motors. There were no ejection seats at that time, and leaving the plane in an emergency did not leave any chance of success. The nickname "flying hoe" (hachoir volant fr.), Which received this aircraft, shows that few believed in a favorable outcome.
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