FOKKER (Smithsonian History of Aviation and Spaceflight Series) [Hardcover]
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
From 1918 until the early 1930s, the most prominent aircraft manufacturer in the world was Anthony G. Fokker of Holland, aka the "Flying Dutchman." The inventor of a device that synchronized machine gun fire with propellers so that an aviator could use his machine gun without shooting himself out of the sky, Fokker is generally credited as the father of aerial combat. And yet, despite this distinction, he remains largely unknown outside the purview of aviation history buffs. That is mainly because, by the mid-1930s, the aircraft giant--whose production line and business interests spanned from Germany to Holland to the U.S.--was already fading into relative obscurity in the shadow of the fast-growing American aviation industry. How Fokker moved from being an insignificant sport-plane builder to an international magnate to struggling has-been is the subject of this carefully documented biography by Dierikx, a researcher at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. Stressing Fokker's talents as both businessman and aircraft manufacturer, Dierikx places his success in the context of WWI, when Germany's demand for top fighter planes proved a boon to the fledging manufacturer. Aviation history fans in particular will relish the accounts of how, through trial and error, Fokker came to adopt the forward technology of his day, such as the newly developed method of oxy-acetylene welding to strengthen airframes. But of equal interest are the tales of Fokker's tempestuous love life, which Dierikx manages to present in such a way that even the most salacious episodes are cloaked in scholarly dignity. Photos.
Copyright 1997 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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