Monday, March 13, 2023

Anthony Fokker with Harley Davidson


https://www.flickr.com/photos/sdasmarchives/33942308480/in/album-72157679929160534/

Anthony Fokker, 
Dutch aircraft manufacturer born 1890, on his father's coffee plantation on Java, Netherlands East Indies [now Indonesia]—died 1939, New York City

 Dutch airman and pioneer aircraft manufacturer who during World War I produced more than 40 types of airplanes (designed by Reinhold Platz) for the German High Command. Initially he offered his designs to both combatants, but the Allies turned him down.

Fokker built his first plane in 1910 and taught himself to fly. In 1912 he established a small aircraft factory at Johannisthal, near Berlin. During World War I he introduced the gear system that made it possible to fire a machine gun through the propeller arc without hitting the blades

in 1922 he established the Atlantic Aircraft Corp. in New Jersey. He also maintained a large aircraft factory in the Netherlands. The first nonstop flight across the United States was made in the Fokker T-2 transport. Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett flew over the North Pole (May 9, 1926) in one of Fokker’s trimotor planes. During the 1920s and the 1930s Fokker concentrated on the design and development of commercial aircraft that were widely used in the fledgling U.S. commercial aviation industry.


Platz, you probably don't know, designed gliders, as they were a fad brought on by the Versailles Treaty forbidding powered aircraft, and one of his designs is my favorite, and you probably haven't ever heard of the Platz Glider either, but the pilot sat on top of the wing, and used two levers to change the canard design wing sides for direction and elevation, if I recall correctly how to describe it's design. http://all-aero.com/index.php/60-gliders/7983-platz-glider-

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