Anthony Fokker: The Flying Dutchman Who Shaped American Aviation

by Marc Dierikx

Overview

Comprehensive biography of Anthony Fokker, the famed Dutch pilot and daredevil aviator

Anthony Fokker: The Flying Dutchman Who Shaped American Aviation tells the larger-than-life true story of maverick pilot and aircraft manufacturer Anthony Fokker. Fokker came from an affluent Dutch family and developed a gift for tinkering with mechanics. Despite not receiving a traditional education, he stumbled his way into aviation as a young stunt pilot in Germany in 1910. He survived a series of spectacular airplane crashes and rose to fame within a few years. A combination of industrial espionage, luck, and deception then propelled him to become Germany's leading aircraft manufacturer during World War I, making him a multimillionaire by his midtwenties.

When the German Revolution swept the country in 1918 and 1919, Fokker made a spectacular escape to the United States. He set up business in New York and New Jersey in 1921, and shortly thereafter became the world's largest aircraft manufacturer. The U.S. Army and Navy acquired his machines, and his factories equipped legendary carriers such as Pan American and TWA at the dawn of commercial air transport.

Yet despite his astounding success, his empire collapsed in the late 1920s after a series of ill-conceived business decisions and deeply upsetting personal dramas. In 1927, aviator Richard Byrd solicited a Fokker three-engine plane to be the first to fly non-stop across the Atlantic. The plane was damaged on a test flight and Charles Lindbergh beat him to it. Lindbergh's solo adventure in the Spirit of St. Louis earned him—and cost Fokker—a lasting place in the history books. Using previously undiscovered records and primary sources, Marc Dierikx traces Fokker's extraordinary life and celebrates his spectacular achievements.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781588346155
Publisher:	Smithsonian Institution Press
Publication date:	04/03/2018
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

MARC DIERIKX is a senior researcher at the Huygens Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has published some fifteen books on the history of aviation, air transport, and other topics.

Table of Contents

1 New York, New York: December 1939 1

2 Java, Netherlands East Indies: April 1890 5

3 Naarden, Holland: March 1910 13

4 Mainz, Germany: July 1910 23

5 Haarlem, Holland: August 1911 37

6 Berlin, Germany: May 1912 47

7 St. Petersburg, Russia: September 1912 61

8 Schwerin, Germany: June 1913 73

9 Stenay, France: June 1915 87

10 Saint-Quentin, France: August 1918 107

11 Berlin, Germany: November 1918 127

12 Haarlem, Holland: March 1919 143

13 New York, New York: November 1920 161

14 Amsterdam, Holland: June 1923 177

15 Detroit, Michigan: October 1925 203

16 Teterboro, New Jersey: April 1927 223

17 New York, New York: February 1929 245

18 New York, New York: July 1931 263

19 The Hague, Holland: November 1933 279

20 Montauk Point, Long Island: September 1935 291

21 St. Moritz, Switzerland: January 1937 307

22 New York, New York: June 1938 325

23 Westerveld, Holland: February 1940 339

24 Schwerin, Germany: A Century Later 347

Acknowledgments 351

Notes 357

Sources and Bibliography 407

Index 417

Editorial Reviews

WALL STREET JOURNAL
Fokker was surely some kind of genius. He taught himself to fly, then to build flying machines until he had one that satisfied him. This was in 1911, when he was 21, eight years after the world’s first powered flight. In “Anthony Fokker: The Flying Dutchman Who Shaped American Aviation,” Marc Dierikx tells the story of this fascinating man and tells it well.

BOOKLIST
In this straightforward, well-sourced biography, Dierikx reveals the life of aviation legend Anthony Fokker. The Dutch pilot and aircraft manufacturer built his company by supplying the German military during WWI, when he perfected the timing mechanism that allowed pilots to shoot through the propeller while flying. A millionaire before he was 25, Fokker’s business fortunes were rocked by German politicaland economic unrest in the 1920s, forcing him to smuggle millions out in a risky escape. Eventually, he moved to America, where his aircraft achieved fame on record-setting flights, and he became the highly successful European sales representative for the Douglas and Lockheed companies. Fokker’s story, which also includes no small amount of personal tragedy, will be extremely appealing to military and aviationhistory fans. It also provides general history readers with a fascinating glimpse at an era where the lines between heroes and villains were blurred, even on the battlefield, and a stunt pilot could, remarkably, through sheer force of will, become an incredibly wealthy man.

From the Publisher