Planes and Choppers Photos

Although a Dutchman, Anthony Herman Gerard Fokker managed to get on an aviation course at Bingen, Germany and designed, built and flew his first aeroplane at Baden-Baden. He soon set up the Fokker Flugzeugwerke factory at Schwerin and started designing monoplanes, some of which were military. When it was realized that it was desirable to arm these scouts with a machine gun firing through the propeller, Fokker developed a synchronization gear similar to that patented by Franz Schneider. Fitted with a developed version of this gear, the Fokker Eindecker was produced, which, due to its revolutionary armament, became one of the most feared aircraft over the western front, its introduction leading to a period of German air superiority known as the Fokker Scourge. After WW1 the Fokker company began to produce passenger aircraft, but Allied post-war restrictions prompted Fokker to move his whole stock and workers secretly by train to Amsterdam in 1919. See Fokker (Netherlands) for the rest of the story.