Fokker F-32
Illustrative image; it may differ from the actual aircraft.The Fokker F-32 was an American four-engined airliner built in 1929 by the Fokker Aircraft Corporation of America at its factory in Teterboro, New Jersey. It was the first four-engined airliner designed and built in the United States: a large high-wing monoplane for 32 passengers, with its engines mounted in tandem pairs beneath the wing. Seven were built, but its commercial career was very short: high cost and cooling problems with the rear engines doomed it, and Western Air Express, its only customer, bought just two. The US Army Air Corps evaluated the F-32 as the YC-20 but did not buy it.
Specifications
Figures for the F-32 variant, the most representative of the family
The type first flew in 1929 (97 years ago) · About 7 units built · Production ended in 1930
Figures for the type, not for this particular aircraft: each variant and each configuration changes something. They are shown in both systems used in aviation.
The story of the type
Fokker's first four-engined design
The F-32 was designed in 1929 by the Fokker Aircraft Corporation of America, the Dutch manufacturer's US subsidiary, at Teterboro, New Jersey. A large high-wing monoplane and Fokker's first four-engined aircraft, it began life as the F-12, which is why its works numbers ran in the 1200 series; the final designation reflected its capacity of 32 passengers, or 16 in sleeping berths. The four engines were mounted in tandem pairs in two nacelles beneath the wing, one pulling and one pushing. The prototype flew with twin fins and rudders and a tailplane with Fokker's typical aerodynamic balances; later aircraft received a third fin and rudder for better directional stability and an unbalanced tailplane. Its size, its complexity and a price of about $110,000 made it a hard sell from the start, and the Great Depression, which broke out only weeks after its first flight, sealed its commercial failure.
First flight and a crash on Long Island
The prototype, intended for Universal Air Lines and painted in its colours, was test-flown in September 1929 by Marshall Boggs. Universal and Western Air Express had each ordered five aircraft, and KLM was also interested. On 27 November 1929 the prototype crashed during a demonstration of a take-off on three engines from Roosevelt Field: one of the two port engines had been stopped, the other failed shortly after lift-off, and the aircraft came down on a house in Carle Place, New York, and burned out. Nobody was killed; Boggs and a mechanic were thrown clear as it struck the roof and escaped serious injury. The poet Ogden Nash saw the crash and described it in a letter to his fiancée Frances, later his wife.
An underpowered layout
The accident exposed the F-32's main weakness: it was underpowered, and its back-to-back engines made matters worse. The front engines drove two-bladed propellers and the rear ones three-bladed propellers, which worked in the disturbed air from the front and were very inefficient, while the rear engines suffered from poor cooling. Replacing the prototype's Pratt & Whitney Wasps with more powerful 575 hp Pratt & Whitney R-1860 Hornet Bs on the following aircraft partly cured the lack of power, but the other problems stayed with the type throughout its short career.
Western Air Express and the Army
The Depression emptied the order book: Universal cancelled, and Western Air Express, the only buyer, took two aircraft instead of five. They entered service on 17 April 1930 from Alhambra airport and later from the Grand Central Air Terminal in Glendale, both in California, flying from Los Angeles to San Francisco and Oakland and to other West Coast destinations. In 1930 the US Army Air Corps borrowed the second F-32 for evaluation as the YC-20; as with the Boeing Y1C-18, it remained the manufacturer's property and was returned after the trials. It was the largest transport the Air Corps had tested, and remained so until the late 1930s, but no order followed.
The end of the line
Only seven F-32s were completed. The YC-20 was dismantled in 1932, the aircraft that found no buyer were scrapped, and from 1933 one of Western Air Express's pair served as an eye-catcher at a filling station. By then General Motors, which had bought 40 per cent of the American company in May 1929, had renamed it General Aviation.
Variants
The four-engined airliner, with four 575 hp Pratt & Whitney Hornets in two tandem nacelles under the high wing, seating 32 passengers by day or 16 in sleeping berths. Only seven were ever completed, with works numbers 1201 to 1207. The prototype, which first flew on 9 September 1929 with Wasp engines, was lost that November; two flew with Western Air Express between Los Angeles and San Francisco from April 1930; and a de luxe example with sofa beds was shown at the 1930 Detroit aircraft show but found no buyer. The rest went unsold too.
The second aircraft (works number 1202), borrowed by the US Army Air Corps in 1930 for evaluation as a transport. It was the largest transport the Air Corps had tested, but no order followed and it went back to Fokker, which dismantled it in 1932.
Overview and history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · technical figures from the manufacturer’s published specifications and standard aviation references
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This page was last updated on October 11, 2026
APA
Vuelopedia. (2026, October 11). Fokker F-32. Retrieved October 16, 2026, from https://vuelopedia.org/en/model/f32
MLA
“Fokker F-32.” Vuelopedia, Fundación Poderia, 11 Oct. 2026, vuelopedia.org/en/model/f32. Accessed 16 Oct. 2026.
Chicago
Vuelopedia. “Fokker F-32.” Fundación Poderia. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://vuelopedia.org/en/model/f32.
Harvard
Vuelopedia (2026) Fokker F-32. Available at: https://vuelopedia.org/en/model/f32 (Accessed: 16 October 2026).
BibTeX
@misc{vuelopedia_en_model_f32,
author = {{Vuelopedia}},
title = {{Fokker F-32}},
publisher = {Fundación Poderia},
year = {2026},
date = {2026-10-11},
url = {https://vuelopedia.org/en/model/f32},
howpublished = {\url{https://vuelopedia.org/en/model/f32}},
urldate = {2026-10-16},
note = {Accessed 2026-10-16}
}Wikipedia
{{cite web |url=https://vuelopedia.org/en/model/f32 |title=Fokker F-32 |website=Vuelopedia |publisher=Fundación Poderia |date=2026-10-11 |access-date=2026-10-16 |language=en}}