Interesting Fokker fact, Pre WW1.

Right on Melv mate.

Com’on just a few Fokker Pic’s please.

To link a few of these posts together.

Fokker was a scoundrel and there were a lot around in World War One. He was an excellent natural pilot and was a very able test pilot in the days when test pilots were not common. He had an instinctive ability to feel what an aeroplane needed. He was also a networker and would spend a lot of time buttering up pilots and people who mattered. Even so there were times when he could not get his work accepted. The early biplanes suffered as the ministry would not alow him good engines. He had upset them so much.

The M3 (I think) and the E-series monoplanes were based on the Morane H. Wing shape and a bunch of other things are very similar although Fokker used Platz’s welded steel tube fuselage and made the fuselage longer. As Alex said, the telescoping tubes were an excellent idea. Around the cockpit the tubes are 22mm with 1mm walll thickness back from the rear of the cockpit they are 2mm and at the tail are 18mm. A similar arrangement is used on my Rearwin!

The E-monoplanes were only successful unti someone esle found out about synchronised guns and this was not a Fokker invention, it had been patented before, but he was first to use it.

Fokker’s quality control was bad. When the DVII at the Musée de l’Air was being restored the deputy curator had to cover it up as every thime he walked past it he noticed something else wrong, like a badly welded bracket or a fuselage upright in the wrong place as it had been cut short and then moved to fit. The Science Museum EIII has some very dangerous looking cross grain on the main spar about 18inches in from the port wingroot.

The wing failures on Dr1s were primarily down to bad workmanship as the double box does not twist that much, certainly much less than an Albatross DV with its single-spar lower wing.

DVIIIs also had big problems and few made it to the front before the end of the war as many were recalled to have wing problems fixed.

Having said that the company made some interesting aeroplanes. The DR1 was a short-lived success but the DVII was really next generation. They flew well and were robust.

Much of the movie film of German aces in World War One and of the Fokker DR1 was actually taken by Anthony Fokker as he was a keen movie cameraman.

M

Many people from the era of Anthony Fokker have had mixed feelings towards him.

If anything he was the blue collar CEO with a perfect sense for marketing, and he was quick to steal other people’s thunder.

I have a copy from 1931 from his memoires called ”The Flying Dutchman”, written and edited by Fokker himself and Bruce Gould.

It is wise to be wary of anything that Fokker had a hand in as much has been proven to be false. There is a lot of false information about Fokker and a fair amount of that came from Fokker!

If it ain’t Dutch, it ain’t much 😀

Great minds, Archer… i had “Reinhold Pfalz” humming in the back of my mind too. But Macky is right, Platz is the name of the guy. Platz was originally chief constructor down at Fokker’s workshop, but did some designing in his free time – including offering designs to other aircraft builders.

Platz took over the design-desk from Martin Kreutzer, who was the engineer behind aircraft like the E.II (or Eindecker).

As said above, Fokker himself was involved mostly with management and public affairs, and far less with the actual design of aircraft (like most companies are ran today :rolleyes: ). The design work of Kreutzer and Platz, and the training/demonstrations of the company (performed by people like Frits Cremer, Bernhard de Waal and, in case of demo flights, Fokker himself) was what really provided the foundation for the Fokker Scourge.

And by the 1930s, Fokker’s stubbornness would ultimately have ment the end for the company. Fokker really disliked metal constructions, and back when Fokker was really struggling to compete with modern metal aircraft, Fokker took some time off to design and build a yacht. Then there was the totally useless T-5 “Skycruiser” he pushed onto the Luchtvaartafdeling – in the end, it was nothing but a bomber, far too lightly armed and armoured for it’s size.

Reinhold Platz is the name I think.

Yeah, that sounds about right to me! Somehow I kept thinking it was Reinhold Pfalz, but that doesn’t rhyme with Pfalz being another WWI era aircraft builder.

I’ll see if I can look it up tomorrow. We’ve got a copy of Mark Dierikx’ biography in the library at work I think. I haven’t read the autobiography mentioned above (yet) but I can recommend this one: Fokker, A Transatlantic Biography

A Quick Translation of page 126: in the chapter ”The German Army buys planes” (no date is mentioned but must be around 1912)
In this chapter Anthony Fokkers is telling:
” In the mean time I was approached by the German Naval officer Felix Schultz, who confided me he was in the German secret service, but also, as many other in those days, was working for the British Government. He had been one of my pupils..
He was a adventurer, scared of nothing, and a real opportunist (sic), ready for anything.
He suggested me to sell my patents to the British Government, because he was well established in the War Office. He would go to England soon anyway, as German spy, to gather information on the British seaplanes.
The bankers that so-called supported me, had already in Berlin informed the Italian and English attache’s of my designs, but without success. But I was in deperate need of currency, and it seemed there was nothing to lose. This is why I happily appointed capt. Schultz as my representative in England. He registered at the AVRO aviation school in Southampton, as a sportsman with an interest in aviation. He pretended to be a novice, and stirred the crowds by suddenly learning to fly. According to his reports he did his best to rise the interest of the Britsh Navy authorities in my designs. However, they had no faith in my theories regarding automatic stability, and said they were quite satisfied with their own machines.
Schultz sent me drawings of the one of their first seaplanes that were on trial, and were considered to be top secret .
But even today the English keep a cloak of secrecy about their planes, and keep designs that are known to everyone, as a secret from their own people.

Actually , my designs were well known in Enlangd in those days. The English aviation journals at the time of the first aviation exhibition in Olympia in 1912 in London, offered in depth descriptions of my first aeroplane. It is without a doubt that the War Office had all the information on my designs that they could have wanted.
When these efforts lead to nothing, I did not pursue anymore to sell to England. After the war I chuckled when I heard that in English Parliament questions were raised as to why I did not sell my planes to England, because as a Dutchman, I could have just as well done so, as I did to Germany.

But in 1913 the English were simply not interested, as it seemed at that time it originally was with the Germans.”

So this is the story according to good old Anthony himself…

Anthony Fokker was more the CEO, he left the actual designing to his chief designer, whose name has escaped me right now

Reinhold Platz is the name I think.

Many people from the era of Anthony Fokker have had mixed feelings towards him.

If anything he was the blue collar CEO with a perfect sense for marketing, and he was quick to steal other people’s thunder.

I have a copy from 1931 from his memoires called ”The Flying Dutchman”, written and edited by Fokker himself and Bruce Gould.

I’ll see tonight in anything is mentioned on this Great Britain offer.

Anyway, much of the stories told in this book have been contested by others who were involved in early Fokker history themselves, that hint on the fact Fokker had a tendency to selfcenter..

Fokker is probably smiling if he can read this; ”doesen’t matter what they say about you, as long as they still talk about you” , would be completely his words..in fact he’ll say he invented the phrase 😀

Yep, That’s TRUE, But still Damn nice looking eh

Very interesting stuff lad’s 😀 😀 ,

And yes I really do agree with all your view’s 😉 , and know of many of his copy’s and their fault’s :rolleyes: .

Very good Alex mate :diablo: , to point them out to the rest of the Once a week reader’s out there :p .

And I have read much about the court case you mentioned Alex, Quiet a drawn out saga, I must say 😮 .

I did do a Red Baron thread a while back 😎 , If I can find it, or if some one else can link it to here, for a matter of interest to those who missed it 🙂 .

thank’s again guy’s 😀 , I am not tooo bad Armie Mate 😉 , but I am stuffed now, and Melting 😮 , ” Gut Nacht ” all, must crash 😉

Come on let’s see and talk some more Nice looking old FOKKER’S 😀

So Anthony wasn’t such a brilliant plane designer

Anthony Fokker was more the CEO, he left the actual designing to his chief designer, whose name has escaped me right now. Fokker’s brilliance was more in his work as a test pilot, and in combining vision and knowledge into one aircraft. He came up with the specifications and the ideas, but the actual designing was not his forte.

There are quite a few instances in Fokker’s career where he built upon other designer’s idea’s. For years he fought in the courts with the Junkers family over a wing design, which they claimed (probably rightly so) Fokker stole. In the end the case was delayed for so long that the Junkers family decided to settle. Not a pretty case, and not the only one.

Fokker’s company suffered heavily from his indecisiveness, stubborness and his involvement with other interests. The Fokker company was moving towards its end when WWII came along, and in 1945 it was needed again to build up post-war Holland again. I believe that this helped it survive for so long.

sounds impressive too :rolleyes: do you have an image of that plane? I would like to see how it looks 😎

one of my beloved liveries is of an Albatros V flown by a german ace pilot with glasses (!!!), dont remember the name right now, but it was overall black with two HUGE edelweiss painted on both sides of the fuselage: so elegant and impressive! 🙂

Alex

sure thing! The Fokker Dr.I is one of the coolest looking birds ever!! (way cooler than the Sopwith Triplane!). Even the D.VII and VIII are superb!
A thing that was great with german pilots of WW1 and WW2 is that they dared to paint their birds in such great liveries!

Alex

Yeah, especially the Red Baron (Baron von Richthoven) with his all red Fokker DR.1

sure thing! The Fokker Dr.I is one of the coolest looking birds ever!! (way cooler than the Sopwith Triplane!). Even the D.VII and VIII are superb!
A thing that was great with german pilots of WW1 and WW2 is that they dared to paint their birds in such great liveries!

Alex

Anyway, he made good-looking planes :rolleyes:

it’s not that he wasnt a brillian man, he wasnt a good designer: some of the technical solutions (like the tubular/telescopic steel framing of the fuselage) were superb, but in the mean time there were some major deficiencies. The frame behind the Dr.I engine mount suffered torsion due to the lack of a decent structure drawing and was field modificated. The monospar wing was lighter but suffered of eccessive torsion and many Fokkers landed with several snapped ribs.. in the era of experimentation it’s no surprise to see a rampant builder having such success, he was the right man at the right time, but his “non-aeronautical” background is evident (not that there was a lot of background to have though..). It’s no surprise that the Fokker projects of the 30s, where the requirements started to grow bigger and bibber, were a failure..

Alex

So Anthony wasn’t such a brilliant plane designer

Alex
It is very possible. The book although readable does seem a tad sensational at times about stuff but my copy dates from 1967 and we probably know a lot more now than we did then. Or with more clarity.
There is sugguestion in what I’ve read so far that there was a lot of copying of ideas and the like

I’m not a WW1 expert, but I was told that Anthony Fokker was not that genius: his Eindecker was a copy of a french Bleriot or Morane Saulnier N which landed behind enemy lines.. Even the Dr.I was a copy of the concept introduced by the Sopwith Triplane. The materials used (on the Dr.I in particular) were not suitable for the G load requirements of the era, and as with the Albatros spars, there were several in flight structrural breaks.

Alex