Fokker: Aircraft Builders to the World

This book is a profusely illustrated history of one of the most innovative aircraft companies in the world. Fokker is one of the great names in aviation history and a name that has survived from the very earliest days of flying. Anthony Fokker was only twenty when he built his first aeroplane in 1910. Seventy years later the company that bears his name is still energetically designing, buildings and selling aircraft – still continuing a long and fascinating tradition. Fokker established the company in 1912 at Johannisthal, outside Berlin. With the coming of war Fokker became a supplier of aircraft to the Central Powers and between 1914-18 provided some of the most famous aircraft of the First World War – among them the E.III, the Dr.I triplane and the D.VII, regarded by many as the finest fighter of the war. In the '20s Fokker became an aggressive and successful exporter from their new base in the Netherlands, and the success of their developing range of civil and military aircraft was trumpeted round the world with a series of record breaking flights and the success of KLM, the Royal Dutch Airline. When the war came to Euorpe again, Fokker aircraft fought in defence of the Netherlands, in Denmark, Norway, Finland and in Luftwaffe and RAF service. In 1945 the occupied Fokker factory lay in ruins. Once again a competitive company had to be built from the ground up, but ingenuity and energy brought the success of such post-war classics as the F-27 Frienship. This book, packed with rare and surpising photographs, contemporary docuemtns and colour illustrations, accurately reflects Fokker's successes and failures in peace and war. It brings the story up to date with an independent Dutch aircraft industry once again looking to world markets and research programmes at the frontiers of technology and new aircraft such as the F-28 at the beginning of their career.