Today, the Junkers F13 looks rather quaint but its claim to fame is given in the book's title. First flown in 1919, this small, six-seater, single-engined airliner, with its distinctive corrugated metal skin, was the first aircraft designed specifically to carry passengers. Among its various innovations was the interesting feature of a trim tank under the rear fin to allow C of G adjustments to be made by the transfer of fuel (50 years later, a more sophisticated version of this method of longitudinal trim was employed on Concorde).
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