Fokker

Fokker was a famous aircraft manufacturer founded in 1912 by Anthony Fokker, a Dutch engineer and pilot. Over time, a number of companies made Fokker aircraft. The earliest companies were in Germany. During World War I (1914-1918), Fokker produced many of Germany’s most important warplanes. After the war, the manufacturer became based in the Netherlands. Eventually, it produced many successful civilian aircraft.

The German military began using Fokker aircraft shortly before the start of World War I. The Fokker Eindecker (monoplane) became the country’s first successful fighter plane. A monoplane is a plane with one pair of wings. Most planes at that time were biplanes, with two pairs of wings. The Eindecker was the first fighter plane to carry machine guns that were timed to fire between revolving propeller blades. This feature enabled pilots to fire the guns more accurately while flying. From August 1915 to early 1916, the Eindecker dominated British and French warplanes. During that period of the war, people often spoke of the “Fokker Scourge.”

In 1917, Fokker introduced the celebrated Dr.1, a plane with three pairs of wings. The letters Dr stood for Dreidecker (triplane). The German pilot Manfred von Richthofen, famously known as the Red Baron for his red-painted planes, scored 19 of his final 21 aerial victories in a Dr.1. In 1918, Fokker introduced the biplane D.VII fighter. The D.VII proved to be Germany’s most effective fighter plane of the war.

After World War I, Anthony Fokker returned to the Netherlands and established an aircraft company there. In 1924, he also started a company that built planes in the United States. By the end of the 1920’s, Fokker was the world’s leading aircraft manufacturer.

By the mid-1920’s, passenger airlines had begun operating in a number of countries. Many airlines flew trimotor (three-engine) versions of the Fokker F.VII, an eight-passenger plane. In 1926, the American explorer Richard Byrd and pilot Floyd Bennett claimed to have flown an F.VII over the North Pole. In 1928, the Australian aviator Charles Kingsford Smith flew his F.VII, the Southern Cross, on the first flight across the Pacific Ocean from California to Australia. In 1929, the U.S. automaker General Motors acquired control of Fokker’s American holdings. Anthony Fokker died in 1939.

During World War II (1939-1945), Germany took over the Fokker factory in the Netherlands. After the war, the factory returned to Dutch control and built civilian and military aircraft. The twin-engine Fokker F27 Friendship, introduced in 1958, became a popular plane used by many airlines.

Fokker also built warplanes for other aircraft manufacturers, such as General Dynamics and Lockheed. It produced its own successful planes into the 1980’s, but business soon declined. Dutch manufacturer Stork Aerospace acquired a bankrupt Fokker in 1996. In 2010, Stork renamed its aerospace group Fokker Technologies.