How Anthony Fokker Pioneered Early Aircraft Development | Amazing Aviation | Spark

Video from the channel Spark about Fokker, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 52:26. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

Documentary from the Amazing Aviation series tracing interwar aviation through its pioneers, starting with Anthony Fokker. Born in the Dutch East Indies, Fokker built his first aircraft, made a name for himself as an exhibition pilot and founded his company in Germany. During the First World War the German government took over his factory, and starting from Roland Garros's captured monoplane he developed a synchroniser that allowed firing between the propeller blades. After the war he moved hundreds of airframes, engines and parts to the Netherlands and opened a new plant there.

The piece continues with the F.VII and its trimotor version, an idea of Robert Noorduyn's, and then covers other names from the 1920s and 1930s: René Fonck's transatlantic attempt with the Sikorsky S-35, the Junkers F 13 and G 38, Howard Hughes's records, inventors such as Leonard Bonney and Lyman Gilmore, the first in-flight refuelling trials, the rocket planes of Fritz von Opel and Gottlob Espenlaub, helicopter pioneers and the airship era, from the Graf Zeppelin to the R100 and R101 and the Hindenburg. It closes with the great aircraft of the period and the shift from the wood-and-fabric biplane to the all-metal monoplane.

The F.VIIa first flew on 12 March 1925 with a 420 hp Packard Liberty engine; 40 were built, four of them by KLM itself. An F.VII prepared for millionaire Van Lear Black left Schiphol on 15 June 1927 and reached Batavia ten days later. Earhart, Kingsford Smith and Byrd flew the trimotor, which was withdrawn from service after the 1931 crash that killed Knute Rockne. The F.XII entered service on 5 March 1931 with up to 18 passengers, and the four-engined F.XXXVI of 1934 held 32. Fokker died at 49 of meningitis. Elsewhere, the piece highlights the Hindenburg, which burned on 6 May 1937 at Lakehurst, killing 35 of the 97 people on board.