In the early 1920s, our country bought about a thousand military and civilian aircraft abroad. There were two goals: to quickly update the country's air fleet, destroyed by the world and civil wars, and to master the experience of aircraft construction accumulated in the world. The planes were bought in different countries, of different brands, one at a time, several copies, a dozen or so. Many cars (about three hundred) were bought from Professor Junkers in Germany; his firm was at that time the most advanced, even had a concession in Moscow. But, despite this, most of the aircraft (almost five hundred, that is, almost half of all purchased) were purchased from the Dutch designer and entrepreneur Antoni Fokker. The cars are simple, reliable and relatively cheap.
A certain role in Fokker's trade relations with the USSR was also played by the fact that in 1912 Anthony attended a military airplane competition in St. Petersburg. He admired the devices he saw, and at the same time the young pilot YA Galanchikova. With the irrepressible energy that Anthony possessed in those years, he introduced the "Russian spirit" into the designs of his aircraft. The main features were: a welded frame and plywood fenders. The plywood sheathing used instead of the fabric covering made the wing smooth, well-retaining its shape and light, because it took on some of the bending and twisting load. (By the way, it is little known that plywood was invented in Russia - in 1887 by O. S. Kostovich.)
Fokker's aircraft have served us faithfully for over a decade, both in the Air Force and on passenger lines. And after another ten years they were firmly forgotten. Antoni Fokker himself was consigned to oblivion, despite his contribution to domestic and world aviation. In addition, it would not be an exaggeration to say that his life and fate were very unusual, and if he were an American, Hollywood would have made a couple of films about him. Let's try to remove the curtain of the information vacuum from the outstanding personality of a talented aircraft designer. And let's start from the very beginning.
In 1909, the Dutch rich man G. Fokker, who made a huge fortune on coffee plantations in Java (it was there that Antoni Fokker was born), almost forcibly sent his nineteen-year-old son-playful Antoni to the German city of Bingen, where, according to the colorful avenue, the best in Germany, a school of automotive engineers. However, this school turned out to be a provincial workshop. Anthony waved his hand at her and went to travel through Germany. Not far from Mainz, he came across a school of chauffeurs, for which a certain Buchner, posing as a seasoned aviator, undertook to build and fly an airplane with a motor purchased with the funds of a city baker.
I remember this flight over the school for a long time. Having dispersed the car, Buchner could neither lift it off the ground, nor stop it, nor turn it away from the fence at the end of the airfield. The principal of the school ran after the apparatus rushing across the field, swearing desperately, and burst into tears when the airplane turned into a heap of rubble. The angry baker took his motor, Büchner disappeared, and his apprentice Anthony Fokker decided to build the plane himself.
The prototype of all Fokker aircraft was a monoplane with strongly raised wingtips, which allowed it to do without ailerons. At first, there was no steering wheel either, so when jogging, the car moved in any direction, just not where the pilot was directing it. After that, the steering wheel was installed, and by the end of 1910 the apparatus - "Spider 1" - was ready. On December 24, 1910, the plane under the control of Antoni Fokker took off from the ground and flew 100 meters. The next time the "sponsor" and Fokker's friend Franz von Baum sat at the helm, he crashed the plane safely for his health. Fokker did not worry about what had happened for long and almost immediately set about creating the new Spider-2 aircraft, which first flew on May 12, 1911.
It had an extremely simple design of the wings, which consisted of "pocket plating" - two layers of canvas quilted with paired seams along and across. Steel pipes - spars were pushed along the wing between the seams, and across - straight ribs. The front spar was the toe of the wing, the trailing edge was twine. The wings did not have a profile. The scheme of the aircraft is a bracing midwing with large transverse V wings (9 °). Engine - "Argus" in 100 liters. with. On the Spider II airplane, Fokker completed all the flights necessary to obtain a pilot's certificate and began building a third model, on which he intended to perform demonstration flights in his homeland, in Holland.
Delivered to Haarlem, "Spider III" made a stunning impression. Anthony made six flights on it with a duration of up to 11 minutes, including over an 80-meter bell tower. This aircraft took part in the 1912 military airplane competition, where it took fourth place. One of the acquaintances of Fokker Sr. said then: "Who would have thought that your son would fly so high!"
Many years later, Anthony said that the happiest moments of his life were these triumphant flights over his native Haarlem, who once took him to Germany as a mischievous and idler, but met him as a hero …
And a few months later, again in Germany, Fokker had such seven minutes that he later called them the most terrible in his life.
In December 1911, Anthony decides that his hobby should be put on the rails of business. A hangar was purchased in the suburbs of Berlin, in which the aircraft company Fokker Airplanebau was founded. To gain a reputation, A. Fokker decided to demonstrate the merits of his "Spider 3" himself at aviation week at the end of May 1912. And in flight at an altitude of 750 meters, the upper wing extensions suddenly sagged. This meant that one of the lower stretch marks had burst, and the wing could fall off at any moment. Reducing speed, Fokker began to descend carefully. The wing fluttered. Anthony signaled to his passenger, Lieutenant Schlichting, to get on the wing in order to partially compensate for the lift with his own weight, to unload the structure. And the lieutenant accidentally pushed the casing with his foot. The wing broke off at a height of ten to fifteen meters, the device crashed to the ground. Schlichting was killed on the spot, and Fokker was sent unconscious to the hospital. But the disaster did not discourage Anthony.
He continued to build "Spiders", designed a folding plane transported by car, developed a seaplane, visited St. Petersburg, where his "Spider" took fourth place in the competition of military airplanes. The famous Russian "aviatrix" L. A Galanchikova set a height record for women (2140 m) on the Spider, and Fokker himself set an altitude record for men (3050 meters). The Fokker then flew over Germany from Berlin to Hamburg. They started talking about Fokker. He began to receive private orders for aircraft. In 1912-1013. Fokker managed to sell half a dozen Spiders. In the fall of 1913, a new company, Fokker Flugzeugwerke, was established in the vicinity of Schwerin.
Nevertheless, the decisive role in his further fate was played by the German military. Back in 1909, the German War Ministry for the first time released funds for the development of aviation a paltry amount - 36 thousand marks. However, this did not mean that the Germans neglected the development of air weapons: it was just that in Germany then the main attention was paid to the development of "zeppelin". The airship orientation also determined the characteristics of German aircraft engines: with high efficiency and service life, they were significantly heavier than French ones. And this feature of them manifested itself in the fact that by the winter of 1913-1914 Germany, having taken away all records of the range and duration of flights from France, could not take away the speed record from her. However, until the spring of 1914, this did not bother military leaders.
It must be remembered that Fokker was not only a designer, but also a pilot. The dizzying aerobatics performed by the French virtuoso Pegu then made an indelible impression on Fokker. A skilled pilot himself, Fokker set out to surpass Pegu, but that required a plane with very different stances from the Spiders. In 1913, Fokker buys a Moran monoplane in poor condition for a pittance. It was this step that served the further development of the Fokker scheme, since the designer replaces the wooden power set of the fuselage on it with a welded one made of steel pipes. This was the first manifestation of the designer's style. However, Anthony never hesitated to improve existing designs. Therefore, it was difficult enough to accuse him of plagiarism. The car turned out to be light, sporty. On it, Fokker began to master Pegu's dizzying tricks and, with particular trepidation, the famous "loophole" of the Russian pilot PN Nesterov.
By the spring of 1914, partly under the impression of a cascade of figures cast in the air by Fokker, the concept of a "cavalry monoplane" - a light, high-speed, maneuverable reconnaissance aircraft, matured in the heads of German strategists. Fokker received an order for a single-seat monoplane with an 80-100 hp engine. with. And a few months after the outbreak of the First World War, the military demanded to install a machine gun on this airplane.
Surprisingly, but true: the planes of the belligerent powers entered the world war without weapons, since the then military experts considered the main task of aviation to be reconnaissance and adjusting artillery fire. And the planes had to be armed already in the course of hostilities. The British set up a machine gun in the bow of the Vickers, a clumsy, slow-moving machine with a pusher propeller. The French mounted light machine guns high above the wing so that the bullets would fly over the propeller disc. Both of these solutions turned out to be unacceptable for the Germans: they did not have aircraft with pushing propellers, and there was an acute shortage of light machine guns. It was not possible to install heavy machine guns high above the wing. Devices were needed to shoot through a rotating propeller.
A serious attempt at solving this problem was made by the Frenchman Rolland Garro. In November 1914, the famous French test pilot of the Moran-Solinier company, Lieutenant Garreau, proposed the idea of creating a single-seat fighter armed with one machine gun, fixed parallel to the flight line and firing through a circle, swept away by a propeller. To prevent bullets hitting the propeller without piercing or damaging it, Garro proposed a so-called bullet cutter. The cutter was a triangular, steel prism worn on the propeller blades in the place where they intersect with the extended axis of the bore of a stationary machine gun. Bullets, hitting the edge or face of the prism, ricocheted and did not damage the propeller. More than 15% of the bullets from the number of all shots ricocheted. In February 1915, Garro's proposal was implemented, the first cut-off devices were installed on the French two-seater Moran-Saulnier aircraft. On February 26, 1915, Garro conducted an air battle with four enemy bombers on an airplane with installed cut-off devices. Having spent five clips, he forced the enemy crews to stop flying to the target and turn back. In 18 days, he shot down 5 German airplanes. Approaching the enemy formation, Garro opened fire from close range.
It can be safely argued that the invention of Rolland Garro opened the way to the creation of a real fighter plane, since now the pilot could focus on solving a narrower range of tasks, the main one of which was to take an advantageous position for shooting. New weapons brought to life and new tactics of battle: the attacking aircraft approached the target in the line of fire. This tactic has survived to this day. Naturally, Germany was very interested in the new weapon, and quickly got hold of it. On April 19, Garro's engine stalled during a free search due to a breakdown, and he glided into the territory occupied by the Germans. The Germans copied the novelty, but the results were deplorable. Unlike French bullets covered with copper, German bullets in chrome jackets carried the screws.
Fokker was urgently summoned from Schwerin to Berlin …
Before that, Anthony had never held a machine gun in his hands, had a very vague idea of its work. Nevertheless, he undertook to carry out the assignment and, having received a standard army machine gun for experiments, left for Schwerin. Three days later, he reappeared in Berlin. A plane with a machine gun that could shoot through the propeller was attached to his car. For 48 hours, without sleep or rest, Fokker, using a cam unit, connected the locking mechanism of the machine gun to the motor shaft so that shots were fired only when there was no propeller blade in front of the muzzle of the machine gun. Synchronizer tests were successful, Fokker received the first order for 30 sets. In May 1915, the first German fighter, the Fokker E. I, appeared at the front. It looked like two peas in a pod like "Moran", differing from it only in the design of the landing gear and the metal frame of the fuselage. (And this time talking about plagiarism would not be entirely correct: Fokker formally bought a license from the Moran-Saulnier company and began producing aircraft of this system even before the outbreak of the First World War.) The main thing that made Fokker a true fighter was a machine gun, for the first time equipped with a synchronizer for firing through a propeller.
The advantage of this solution is obvious: in the French aircraft, the linings reduced the efficiency of the propeller, and the bullets hitting the blade created significant loads on the engine. In addition, the synchronizer made it possible to install two, three or even four barrels located directly near the pilot. All this eliminated the inconvenience of reloading, increased the accuracy of shooting due to the rigid attachment of the weapon and made it possible to more conveniently position the sight. On account of the German fighters, not without reason nicknamed the "Fokker scourge", there were many shot down British and French aircraft (mostly slow "scouts"). The German army immediately gained an advantage. Fighter aircraft, and after it attack aircraft, owe their appearance to the solution of the problem to the invention of the synchronizer.
Fighters with synchronized machine guns instilled fear in the British and French. True, at first the German pilots limited themselves to reconnaissance flights and defensive battles. But in August 1915, Lieutenants Immelmann and Belke won several victories each, and this began the high combat reputation of the Fokker fighters. N. Billing, a British aviation and political figure, speaking in parliament, said that sending British pilots to fight the Fokkers was a premeditated murder.
The Allies feverishly designed new machines to rival the Germans. Meanwhile, Fokker found himself embroiled in patent litigation. In 1913, the designer F. Schneider received a patent for a synchronizer. This patent appeared in court as the main document testifying to Fokker's infringement of Schneider's patent rights. Having carefully studied the case, Antoni tried to prove to the court that his synchronizer differs significantly from Schneider's one, and above all that its design is workable, while Schneider's one is not. Indeed, Schneider proceeded from the fact that the machine gun should be blocked every time the propeller blade passes in front of the muzzle. But with a two-blade propeller and 1200 rpm, the muzzle is blocked by the blade 40 times per second, and the rate of fire of the machine gun itself is only 10 rounds per second. It turned out that the locking mechanism had to be controlled by a blocking mechanism that worked four times faster than the machine gun itself, which was practically impossible. Fokker took a different approach. He realized that the only thing that was required was to stop the shot only when the bullet could hit the blade. If the machine gun fires 10 shots per second, it makes no sense to interrupt its firing 40 times during this time. To establish a practical blocking frequency, Fokker screwed a plywood disk to the propeller of an aircraft with a machine gun and, turning it by hand, received a series of bullet holes. On this disc, he easily adjusted the synchronizer: as soon as the holes on the disc lay close to the blade, the blocking mechanism had to interrupt the shot. This purely practical engineering approach allowed Fokker to create a workable structure.
However, the court did not take this consideration into account and ordered Fokker to pay Schneider for each synchronized machine gun. Anthony saw in this decision the same hostility that he, a subject of Holland, constantly faced in Germany. And it is not surprising that he himself never considered Germany his homeland. Once he told about a case when testing the first aircraft with synchronized machine guns. On one of these flights, Fokker caught up with a French reconnaissance aircraft in the crosshair. But he didn’t open fire. “Let's leave the Germans to shoot their opponents themselves,” Anthony decided and let the Frenchman leave.
References:
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