ANTHONY FOKKER

Greymouth Evening Star, 9 October 1928, Page 12

ANTHONY FOKKER

WAYWARD LAD'S PERSISTENCE. '

Some eighteen years ago there was an argument in the home of Mynheer Fokker in Amsterdam, Holland. It was not a new argument. It had been fought out many times before.

Mynheer Fokker took a firm grip on parental authority. “Anthony,” he said. “For the ten thousandth time —NO. 1 will not buy you an aeroplane. I will buy you a motor boat or an automobile —but no aeroplanes. Do you think I want you to kill yourself in one of those crazy things.” Twenty-year-old Anthony Fokker lifted his eye-brows resignedly. “Very well, papa,” he said. And then he went out and built himself an aeroplane and taught himself to fly. That’s the way that Anthony H. Fokker has been doing things all his life. Now, still a young man, he is probably the biggest figure in the world of aeroplane design and building, and he is still smiling elusively and softly preparing to do things that can’t be done.

It was in 1890 that a sou arrived at the home of Mynheer Fokker at Kediri, Dutch East Indies. He was named’ Anthony, and nobody guessed' that in less than thirty years he would make the name of Fokker known wherever aeroplane wings fly. Anthony was a small boy when his parents returned to Holland, first to Haarlem, and then to Amsterdam. Like the rest of the small Dutch boys, Anthony went to school and skated on the canals in the winter and sailed his boats on them in summer. But h’b was incessantly making something. He was always arousing envy in the breasts of his schoolmates with some strange contraption of wood and string and wire and metal, that ran or floated or did something. “There isn’t any better gift for a child than things to make things with,” he said. That was in his suite at the Biltmore, where a print of the Santa Maria, ploughing clumsily through crested seas, looking down at him, and through windows came the voices of the newsboys: “Flyers reach Australia!” A Fokker ’plane, that the earnest little Dutch boy, grown up, had designed, roaring at 120 miles an hour over seas that were unknown when the Santa Maria sailed. “Things to make things with.” Anthony Fokker’s life—turning things into marvels. So the young Anthony Fokker, 20 years old, who had fired his youthful imagination with the pioneer exploits of the Wrights and Bleriot, said: “Very well, papa,” and went to work on his aeroplane. It was a clumsy-looking thing that he turned out, a sprawling, ungraceful contraption with a wilderness of wires.

The pilot’s seat was a sort of saddle, perched halfway back along the maze of crossbars and supports, with comfort a secondary thought. Young Anthony Fokker patterned his first ’plane somewhat after the ideas of his predecessors in the aeroplane building business, but he put in a lot of his own notions. And then, when he had his ’plane finished young Anthony Fokker set about the business of learning to fly. He couldn’t run down to the nearest airport and sign up for lessons. He had to figure it out for himself. He worked it all out on paper—he would pull this and push that, and the other thing should happen. And one day there was a loud spluttering and snorting and rattling of wires in Amsterdam, and young Anthony Fokker was flying in his homemade ’plane. Incredulous observers admitted that he managed to get the thing in the air, but he never would be able to get it down safely, but Anthony Fokker fooled them again. He came down right side up and intact, and from then on ho knew what his life work was going to be. He Went on building aeroplanes and improving them, adding the things he read about and things that he worked out for himself. He went on flying, although his greatest interest was not so much in actual flying as in design and building. He interested a few kindred spirits, but not many. Flying was a pretty risky gamble in those days. He had been building aeroplanes for only a few months when he tried to interest the Dutch Government in his ideas. The Dutch Government wasn’t interested. Then he went to England with a trunk full of designs and drawings. For weeks he tried to arouse official enthusiasm. Official enthusiasm declined to be aroused. He pestered the War Ministry and industrial leaders and anybody he could think of who might be interested in building aeroplanes. He could not find any support. Officials took to going into hiding when Anthony Fokker was reported to be in sight. It didn’t make any particular difference to Anthony Fokker when he built his aeroplanes. This was in the years

when only a few people were worrying about war possibilities, and nobody dreamed that if war actually came the aeroplane would be of any special importance.

Possibly a few years later, when Fokker ’planes were buzzing over the Western Front, piloted by German aviators, there may have been men in England who had uncomfortable recollections of sending out “not at home” messages to a youhg Dutchman who was incessantly bothering them. Because, when Anthony Fokker was trying to get a foo'thold, he would have built aeroplanes anywhere he had a chance.

In 1912 a competition for military aircraft was held in St. Petersburg, as the Russians then called their city that has had two names since. Anthony Fokker saw a chance. He entered some of his planes, and they attracted much attention. Among others, they attracted the attention of German officials who were present at the competition. The German Government offered to help Fokker develop his aeroplane building business. He received orders for several ’planes, and Germany co-operated with him in training pilots.

In a very short time from the day when the first Fokker ’plane snorted and lurched off the ground at Amsterdam the Fokker Flugzeug Werke at Schwerin, Mecklenburg, had become an important centre of aircraft, activity. And then came the war. It was merely chance that Fokker ’planes were being built in Germany when the war arrived and gave the business of aeroplane construction its greatest impetus.

In a few months Fokker military ’planes were being turned out by the hundred and Fokker himself was work-

ing day and night, solving problems of construction and flight. For instance, there was the matter of firing from an aeroplane. The most effective direction of fire, the easiest for the pilot, who should be able to join in the battle, would be straight ahead, so that he could fire while driving on an enemy ship. The propellor blades were in the way. The German authorities put the problem to Fokker. He had been thinking about it already and he knew what had to be done. He borrowed a machine gun, put it on his shoulder and tramped back to his factory, and went to work. Forty-eight hours later he reported that it was all done, and what next, please? It was all a matter of mathematics and ballistics. An aerplone propellor revolves so many metres a second, a bullet travels so many times faster. All Fokker had to do was to synchronise things so that the bullets would dodge between the blades, that were revolving too fast for the human eye to see. He just figured it out, and it worked. After the war Fokker, who hadn’t contemplated being caught in a war when he went to Germany, returned to Holland. There he built the Nederlandsche Vliegtuigenfabriek, and while the rest of the world was learning to pronounce the name of his factory he began turning out highly-improved 'planes. 1

Holland and the N.V. —they simply had to abbreviate it for everyday use —served him merely as a foothold, a sort of home port. , Aeroplane wings refused to be cramped. Besides, America was a great new field for aeronautical development, with lots of space to fly in and lots of aviation enthusiasts to buy ’planes. So before long there was a. branch of the Nederlandsche Vliegtuigenfabriek in New York, and Fokker was interested in an aircraft plant in New Jersey. A few years ago when long-distance flights came over the horizon, Fokker

was ready for them. He was looking ahead. Already he was talking about things that other aircraft builders said were impossible. Many of them are still in the future —for instance, the notion of successful flying in an engineless craft with energy taken from the air. It was in 1920 that Fokker, discussing distance Hights, casually remarked that he wouldn’t be surprised some day to see engineless ’planes flying from America to Europe in one day.

5 He didn’t expect to see it very soon, > just as now he doesn’t expect to see i ’planes buzzing back and forth across the oceans within a few months. He ' doesn’t believe in taking ‘fool chances.’ i This aviation business is a serious proposition. It isn’t a stunt affair. Fokker had very definite views about > what should and what shouldn't be tried. This business of picking up a “crate” anywhere, manning it with inexperienced pilots and useless passengers, and starting out to trust in luck —that’s just plain silly, and it hurts the real development of aviation.

But the flights that are properly organised, properly manned—the flights of a Lindbergh, a Chamberlain, a Kingsford Smith, a Koehl —that’s different. That’s pioneering, not stunts. Always working on the principle of plenty of planning, plenty of advance preparation, plenty of testing, he began to turn out his cabin ’planes, fast, safe and comfortable —a. far cry from the noisy thing that he hoisted off the ground in Amsterdam eighteen years f ago. He built 'planes for special flights. He built the ’plane that Commander Byrd took over the North Pole, making air history.