Fokker

The name Fokker is synonymous with early aviation warfare. Rising to prominence as a builder of biplanes and triplanes used extensively by Germany in World War I, Anthony Fokker (1890-1939) made aerial combat possible by inventing a device to synchronize machine gun fire with propellers. By 1918 he was the manufacturer of Germany's top fighter planes. A decade later, with his business interests extending from Germany and his native Holland to the United States, he headed. The world's largest aircraft manufacturing conglomerate, renowned for an innovative trimotor plane. Arguing that Fokker's early success was due as much to good timing and marketing strategies as to engineering genius, Marc Dierikx draws from archives in Europe and the United States to trace Fokker's mixed career as an aviation businessman. He shows how Fokker's reluctance to invest in research and development, his propensity for producing small-series, highly customized. Aircraft, and his struggle with quality control led to the eventual decline of his empire. The book describes how Fokker's eccentricities and constant travels had dramatic consequences on his personal life and how his financial strategies affected the sales of his planes. Dierikx also details Fokker's unfounded confidence in the giant F-32.