Fokker, Anthony Herman Gerard

Born Apr. 6, 1890, in Kediri, on the island of Java; died Dec. 23, 1939, in New York. Dutch aircraft designer.

In 1913, Fokker founded an aircraft factory near Schwerin, Germany; the factory produced mainly fighters, which were widely used by Germany in World War I. In 1919, after the Treaty of Versailles, Fokker moved his plant to Amsterdam. In 1922 he emigrated to the USA, where he founded the Fokker Company, which manufactured passenger aircraft. Dozens of types of military and civil-aviation Fokker airplanes of simple and inexpensive design were widely used in many countries, including the USSR; for example, Fokker passenger airplanes with from five to seven seats were used in the 1920’s on the first air routes from Moscow to Königsberg and from Moscow to Mineral’nye Vody. Fokker was the first to find practical application for a synchronizer that enabled machine guns to fire through an airplane’s propeller arc.