
 | The Fokker Scourge by Stan Stokes.
Anthony Herman Gerard Fokker was born in the Dutch East Indies in 1890. When his father retired the Fokker family returned to Holland, where Anthony attended school. He dropped out of college, and being deemed unfit for military service, worked at a number of odd jobs. Fokkers father persuaded his son to attend an automobile mechanics school in Germany, but Anthony was disappointed and convinced his father to enroll him in a school near Mainz which offered courses in aircraft construction and flying. This endeavor was not particularly successful, and Anthony decided to build his own flying machine. He found a partner in Oberlieutenant Von Daum, a fifty-year-old officer in the German military. The aircraft was completed in 1910, and Fokker flew it successfully on a number of flights. Von Daum, unfortunately, destroyed the machine on his first attempt at flying it. The two partners then teamed with a boat-builder to construct a second aircraft. In early 1912 Anthony had organized Fokke.........
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