The boy who circled the church tower

On 1 September 1911 a 21-year-old from Haarlem took off in a home-made monoplane he called the Spin – the Spider – and flew circles around his home town’s church tower. Anthony Fokker had been born in Blitar, on Java, the son of a coffee planter, and his partner had already crashed two earlier Spins. The third one made him a national celebrity. Within months he had left for Germany, where the aircraft business was bigger, and on 12 February 1912 he registered Fokker Aviatik GmbH at Görries, near Schwerin. The young Dutchman would soon be building fighters for the Kaiser.

The Fokker Scourge

In the spring of 1915 Fokker’s Eindecker monoplane went to the front with a machine gun that fired straight through the propeller arc, timed by a pushrod mechanism so the bullets missed the blades. On 1 July 1915 Kurt Wintgens forced down a French Morane in one; Max Immelmann scored all 15 of his victories in the type. Allied crews called themselves Fokker Fodder, and the months of German air superiority became the Fokker Scourge. Fokker took the credit for synchronisation. Historians are less generous: others had worked on the idea before him, and Roland Garros’s captured deflector plates had shown the way.

A fighter written into the Armistice

The Dr.I triplane first flew on 5 July 1917. Only 320 were built, but Manfred von Richthofen scored his last 17 victories in one and was killed in it on 21 April 1918. Its successor did more damage. The D.VII, flying from January 1918, was so good that the Armistice of November 1918 obliged Germany to surrender every one of them. About 3,300 were built, many by Albatros under licence. Much of the design credit belongs to Reinhold Platz, a designer with little formal training whose role Fokker rarely advertised.

Six trains across the border

Defeat should have ended the story. Instead Fokker went home and took his factory with him. Accounts differ on the scale: the company history speaks of six entire trains carrying parts and 117 C.Is, D.VIIs and D.VIIIs; Fokker’s biography counts 350 railway wagons, 220 aeroplanes and more than 400 engines, eased across the border with bribes. Either way, a new works rose near Amsterdam in 1919, backed by the coal traders of SHV. By the late 1920s Fokker was, by some measures, the largest aircraft manufacturer in the world.

The crash that grounded a brand

The F.VII trimotor made the name famous. Richard Byrd took one towards the North Pole in 1926; Charles Kingsford Smith’s Southern Cross crossed the Pacific to Australia in 1928; that June Amelia Earhart became the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air, as a passenger in the F.VII Friendship. In America his Atlantic Aircraft Corporation flourished until March 1931, when a TWA Fokker F-10 broke up over Kansas, its wooden wing weakened by rot. Among the dead was the Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne. US Fokkers were grounded, General Motors took over, and the American branch ended up inside North American Aviation.

The Friendship years

The Second World War brought occupation, forced production of German trainers and Ju 52 parts, and factories stripped and bombed by 1945. The comeback was remarkable. The S.11 trainer sold to several air forces, the S.14 was one of the first purpose-built jet trainers, and a new plant opened beside Schiphol in 1951. Then came the F27 Friendship, first flown on 24 November 1955 with Rolls-Royce Dart turboprops. With 799 built, including 207 by Fairchild in the United States, it became the best-selling European turboprop airliner. The F28 jet followed in 1967, and Fokker assembled F-16s and built satellites on the side.

Too many jets, not enough money

The end came from ambition. In the 1980s Fokker developed the Fokker 50 and Fokker 100 at the same time; costs ran away, and the Dutch state took a 49 per cent stake in 1987. In 1993 Deutsche Aerospace took 51 per cent of a new holding company, but losses mounted against a crowded regional-jet market. On 22 January 1996 Daimler-Benz cut off support. Talks with Bombardier, Samsung and Chinese buyers failed, and on 15 March 1996 Fokker was declared bankrupt, with 5,664 jobs lost – reported as the largest dismissal in Dutch history. The profitable parts survive today as GKN Fokker.

Fábricas

• Görries works · Görries, near Schwerin, Germany — Fokker Aviatik registered here in 1912; WWI fighter production
• Amsterdam works · Amsterdam, Netherlands — Founded 1919 after the move from Germany
• Schiphol plant · Schiphol, near Amsterdam — New factory built next to the airport in 1951
• Woensdrecht plant · Woensdrecht, North Brabant — Second postwar site; Fokker 70 first flight was made from here in 1993
• Atlantic Aircraft Corporation · United States — American branch, later Fokker Aircraft Corporation of America; absorbed by General Motors 1930

Pessoas

• Anthony Fokker · founder, pilot and designer — Born 6 April 1890 in Blitar, Java; known as the Flying Dutchman; died in New York on 23 December 1939
• Reinhold Platz · chief designer — Credited by historians with much of the Dr.I, D.VII and D.VIII design
• Martin Kreutzer · early designer — Preceded Platz as designer
• Ben van Schaik · chairman at bankruptcy, 1996

Recordes e pioneirismos

• First non-stop transcontinental flight across North America, in a Fokker T-2, 1923
• F.VII Southern Cross: first flight across the Pacific from the US to Australia, June 1928
• F.VII Friendship: Amelia Earhart first woman to cross the Atlantic by air, 17 June 1928
• F27 Friendship: best-selling European turboprop airliner, 799 built
• Built the first Dutch satellite, ANS, with Philips and Dutch universities