Furniture makers buy an aircraft firm

Harmen Pander ran a furniture company in The Hague. In 1924 it bought the assets of the bankrupt Vliegtuig Industrie Holland, including designers Theo Slot and H. van der Kwast, and Harmen and his son Henk set up an aircraft company. Its first product was the Pander D trainer, an improved Holland H.2. The sesquiplane Pander E of 1926 was the most successful, with 17 built for the Dutch national flying school. In 1930 Slot built the first Dutch glider, a copy of Lippisch’s Zögling.

The Postjager

The most famous Pander was the S-4 Postjager, a three-engined mail plane suggested by pilot Dirk Asjes, impatient with slow mail to the Dutch East Indies. In December 1933 it set out with Christmas mail, was delayed in Italy by an engine failure, and reached Batavia with 45 hours of flying time. Its unreliability earned it the nickname Pechjager, the breakdown hunter. The return flight to the Netherlands took from 6 to 11 January 1934.

A bad end

In October 1934 the Postjager entered the MacRobertson Air Race from England to Melbourne. At Allahabad it hit a vehicle while taxiing and burned out, the crew escaping unhurt. The disaster ended the company. During the war Henk Pander, a member of the Dutch Nazi party, revived the firm to build 555 SG-38 gliders for the German NSFK, and was tried for collaboration afterwards. The Postjager had reached Allahabad 36 hours after leaving Mildenhall.

Fábricas

• The Hague works · The Hague, South Holland — Company base, 1924–1934

Pessoas

• Harmen Pander · founder — Furniture company director who set up the aircraft firm
• Henk Pander · co-founder — Son of Harmen; revived the firm in WWII
• Theo Slot · designer — Designed the Postjager and built the first Dutch glider
• Dirk Asjes · pilot — Proposed the Postjager mail plane

Recordes e pioneirismos

• First sailplane built in the Netherlands, the Pander Zögling, 1930