Fokker F.25 Promoter

A car sales dealer named Fritz Diepen, whose business had taken, not unsurprisingly, a downturn after the German invasion contacted a man called Koebakker to design a light single engined aeroplane capable of carrying a pilot plus 2 /3 passengers. Diepen then, in secrecy, built the Diepen 421 Difoga (q.v.). The fact that this aeroplane was built in the occupation and not discovered by the Nazis was remarkable in itself. However, the plane was made from poor materials so it's life after the war was a short one. Undaunted, Diepen approached Fokker with an order for 100 aeroplanes, if they would build something similar. His intention was to start an air taxi company. The Prospector was duly built and as noted elsewhere it suffered vibration problems due to the extended propellor shaft. The underlying problem for this aeroplane was that after the war there was so many ex military aeroplanes available at knock down prices that to try and sell a brand new unproven design was going to be extremely difficult. This coupled with the fact that Fokker had received an order for 100 S11 Instructors meant that they just did not have the production capacity. So after 21 models had been produced the production ended and in short order all remaining Promoters were destroyed, although some years later Fokker did look at producing a plane of similar design but to no avail.

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