Fokker's talented staff creates a back country workhorse. nthony H.G. Fokker was not ering, helped with the arrangements. The secret of Fokker's success was the most popular aviation per­ The future Reichsmarshall, equipped his genius for hiring talented people. A sonality in the early '20s. with a pacified Fokker D.VII, would He had picked the right engineers Fokker, a Dutchman, had thrown in be Fokker's sales representative in and designers, such as the gifted with the Germans in 1914. He was Scandinavia for a year or more. Reinhold Platz, a welder who rose widely perceived to be a war profi­ Fokker's detractors have alluded from the ranks, and Walter Rethel, teer and, indeed, had been one of to a secret 1922 agreement between whose mas- the few major suppliers of the the manufacturer and the new Ger­ Kaiser's air service to survive with his man government, wherein that industrial base more or less intact government would have first call and plenty of money in the bank. on Fokker's services in the Within a matter of months after event of another war. This, of the armistice, Tony Fokker was back course, was long before in business in his native Holland Hitler came to power and manufacturing aircraft. His surrepti­ the idea of another war tious departure from Germany, was anathema to almost which involved marshaling no less everyone. Nevertheless, a than six trainloads of contraband German-Soviet pact main­ materials, tools, engines, and 220 tained a clandestine unfinished aircraft, was a classic Luftwaffe on Soviet soil. piece of international subterfuge. An Fokker supplied most of its ex-fighter pilot, Capt. Hermann Go­ equipment. By John Underwood 10 SEPTEMBER 2000 terpiece would be the Messerschmitt Bf 109. This team created air craft that were among the best avail­ able anywhere in the world. Fokker himself, though no engi­ neer, had an instinctive under­ standing for what was technologi­ cally correct. He was a superb pilot and did much of his own test fly­ ing. Fokker's brilliant demon­ stration flying and masterful sales­ manship was a combination that invariably spelled success. That and the fact that he was not averse to cheating to make a good perfor­ mance look even better on paper. Fokker's warplanes were far supe­ rior to anything available in the "Tony" Fokker, shown in a 1912 Spin United States, which had precious (Spider). He built and flew his first mono­ plane in 1910 at age 20. He moved to little expertise in the production of Germany (Johannistal) in 1912 to seek his combat aircraft. The air service had fortune, becoming a naturalized citizen in been equipped exclusively with 1917. Fokker later became a U.S. citizen French, English, and Italian aircraft and lived in Nyack, NY, when he died of during 1917 and 1918. Indigenous complications following minor surgery in December 1939. designs were regarded as unsuitable for combat for a considerable period of time thereafter. land on the q.t. The F.III, with its There was strong resistance to the Fokker fighters remained in ser­ comfortable passenger cabin (pilots importation of foreign aircraft, par­ vice well into the '20s, both in preferred to remain in open cock­ ticularly anything Teutonic. Fokker's Europe and the United States, which pits), quickly found favor with modest success in selling aircraft to had acquired 50 highly esteemed Europe's infant airline industry, the U.S. military was roundly criti­ D.VIIs for the military. In addition, which included KLM and DVR, the cized from almost every quarter. the army and the navy procured forerunner of Lufthansa. Fokker, on Why spend American dollars over­ small quantities of postwar Nether­ one of his early U.S. visits, brought seas when the aircraft industry at lands-built Fokkers. These included two F.IIIs to test the North American home was in dire need of what little fighters such as the PW-5, CO-2 ob­ market. business there was? servation craft, and T-2 transports, one of which made the first nonstop coast-to-coast crossing of the United States in May of 1923. The T-2 was a stretched version of Fokker's F.I1I commercial aircraft, which had evolved from a prototype built in Germany in the immediate postwar period and spirited to Hol- Fokker escorting Kingsford-Smith's world girdling Southern Cross in a bor­ rowed Monocoupe, July 1931. He was fined $500 for performing stunts with a passenger ("Pushka") and having no certificate. Fokker had never troubled himself to apply for any certificate after earning German FAI License No. 88 in 1911. The fine was rescinded when Fokker presented his newly acquired U.S. private pilot's certificate in September. VINTAGE AIRPLANE 11 Fokker and "Pushka" Galanschikoff, an early Russian aviatrix, in 1913. Fokker sold her a Spider and fell in love. "Pushka" fled the Russian Revolution, lived in New York, and performed pub­ lic relations services for Fokker. She aspired to fly the Atlantic in a Fokker, but Earhart beat her to it. Crow, and the FK.26 transport, a cabin biplane. He was an engineer­ designer by training and a born manager with a full measure of fi­ nancial sense. Noorduyn was named general manager and treasurer of At­ lantic Aircraft. Bob Noorduyn's first production order was for 135 welded steel tube Canada. His mother was fuselages to rejuvenate the U.S. air English. Unlike Fokker, service's dilapidated de Havilland Noorduyn had helped DH-4 bombers. The welded fuselage supply the Allies with was largely a Fokker innovation, and aircraft during the war, his welders were among the most notably in the employ skilled in the industry. Many were of Tom Sopwith and Sir Dutch imports themselves. Indeed, W.G. Armstrong-Whit­ the language on the factory floor was worth & Co. as much Dutch-German as it was Noorduyn had been English. an assistant to another Commercial aviation was late in Dutch designer, Fritz developing in the United States, and Koolhoven, at Arm­ Fokker's F.III transport, which was The Fokker F-11, built at Schwerin in 1919, featured strong-Whitworth, widely used in Europe by KLM and cabin comfort for six passengers. Fokker adopted the full-cantilever wing in 1917. which led to a postwar Lufthansa, was a marketing disap­ hitch in the same ca­ pointment. Only two F.IIIs were pacity with the British imported, one of which found its Wartime sentiments notwith­ Aerial Transport Co., which pro­ way to Anchorage, where the broth­ standing, Fokker had friends and duced the BAT monoplane fighter, ers Wien hoped to start an airline. admirers in the business world and an ultralight monoplane called the The other later belonged to a boot- in the U.S. military. One of them was Brig. Gen. Billy A lineup of Fokker D.Vlls still bearing German crosses at Kelly Field circa 1920. Mitchell, assistant chief of the Peter M. Bowers photo. air service. The upshot of this was the establishment of a com­ pany at Teterboro, New Jersey, in a nearly new plant formerly occupied by the Wittman-Lewis Company, builders of the cele­ brated Barling Bomber. The venture, funded largely by American investment, became known as the Atlantic Aircraft Corporation. Fokker had an able assistant in the person of Robert B.C. Noorduyn, a fellow Dutchman whose mother was English, who would later manufacture the Norseman bush airplane in 12 SEPTEMBER 2000 The first Fokker Tri-Motor was created on short notice to compete in the 1925 Ford Reliabi lity Tou r. It was quite a sensation. Variants pioneered the airways with WAE, American, and Pan Am. legger. The lack of suitable landing facilities, both in the Lower 48 and in the territories, was a major obsta­ cle that had to be overcome. That situation began to change with the privatization of airmail, which became the foundation for scheduled passenger services. The Fords had foreseen the future of air transportation; So had the Guggen­ heims, whose funding for an experimental airline resulted in Western Air Express, which began carrying a few passengers almost from the outset. WAE would pro­ foundly affect Fokker's American sojourn. Ford aroused public interest by sponsoring the first Commercial Air­ plane Reliability Tour in 1925. The nationwide tour afforded millions of Americans the opportunity to see the latest developments in air transporta­ tion. Fokker's marvelous F.VIII/3M Tri-Motor, produced as an after­ thought and brilliantly demonstrated by its maker, was the sensation of the event. Reporter Cy Caldwell, tongue-in-cheek called it the "Fokker PubliCity Tour," and Ford himself was so impressed that he bought the "Tony" Fokker, proud of his "non-stalling," 10-seat F.vll ai rliner, had a gen ius for airplane and named it the Josephine adopting innovative features such as the welded tube f uselage, spl it -axle landing Ford. gear, and full-cantilever wing well before the com petition. VINTAGE AIRPLANE 13 being proprietary. The The F.III, introduced in the United States in 1922, Universal's wide-track needed better landing fields than were generally available at the time. This one made profits for its tripod landing gear, owner by hauling Canadian bootleg. also innovative, would be widely emulated in the decade to follow. Up to that point Whirlwind production had been reserved ex­ clusively for the military. The availabil­ ity of the J-4 and J-5 for commercial ap­ plications greatly en­ hanced Fokker's pro­ spectus for the Whirl­ wind was eminently reliable. The Univer­ sal, first flown in These developments created the five-passenger monoplane to be October 1925, had come to fruition climate for a viable manufacturing powered by a 200-hp Wright J-4 in the remarkably short gestation enterprise that began with the Whirlwind.