INVENTOR OF HUN WAR AIRPLANE IS OUSTED BY TAXES
AMSTERDAM, Nov 29.—H. G. Fokker, inventor of the formidable Fokker plane used by Germany in the war, has arrived in Amsterdam a fugitive from Germany. The German government placed a tax of 14,251,000 marks on his property, which he refused to pay, and when threatened he fled over the border. When the Germans heard of this they confiscated all his property, worth millions of dollars.
Thus, the man who was responsible for whatever success in the air was achieved by the German machine, and who made millions out of Germany during the conflict, has now lost practically everything.
Fokker says he is now through with Germany, and as Holland is too small for him, he plans to visit the United States very soon as in this country he sees vast possibilities for airplane manufacture and development.
In the course of a recent interview with him at his home in Amsterdam he told for the first time the story of his experience in warring Germany.
HE IS NOT A GERMAN.
"I am a Hollander, you know," he explained. "I was making airplanes before the war broke out, and when the Germans asked me to make some for them I could only agree to do so."
When Fokker was asked why his machines were better, at least in the early part of the war, than those of the Allies, he said:
"Well, it seems to me that the Allies permitted the Teutons to do all the pioneering in air-fighting. They let Germany set the pace in the line for a time; but Germany was whipped in the air in the summer of 1918. That was one big reason why the Teuton army had to quit. I had built 3,600 airplanes for the Germans to use in the spring drive, but the Allies had five to our one.
ALWAYS SOMETHING NEW.
"When the war broke out the war office gave me carte blanche to spend money. I invented the system of shooting through the propellor, and that gave the Germans a tremendous advantage over the Allies until the Allies began to shoot through the propellor also; then I found a way of shooting out through the floor of the airplane car, and the surprise was deadly to the Allies until they followed suit. I increased speeds from time to time, and every change in that direction gave the Germans temporary superiority. With my fast propelling machine Immelmann was able to work out his new system of close fighting. He discovered the principle that the deadliest and surest airplane fighting is at close range with a faster machine than your opponent. It took the Allies a long time to solve Immelmann's system, but they got it at last and became as good as Immelmann himself at it.
"Something new was coming up in German airplane development all the time the conflict lasted, and if the war had gone on for several more years we would have put the artillery out of commission. We would have made big guns as old fashioned as spears. It was all the fault of the army red tape in Berlin that it was not begun sooner.
"In 1916 the army authorities asked me if I could make a very cheap airplane, with a very cheap engine, capable of flying about four hours, which could be steered through the air by wireless waves. They intended to load each one of these airplanes with a huge bomb and send them into the air under the control of one flying man, who would herd them through the sky by wireless like a flock of sheep. He would be able to steer them down to earth in just exactly the spot he selected.
"The German idea was that it was a tremendous waste to send shells through the air by means of explosives. Their idea was to put all their explosives into the shells and then move the shells to their destination by gasoline power. They had really lost faith in the use of the big guns. The Big Bertha, which fired shells seventy-five miles on to Paris, was probably partly intended to delude the Allies into believing that the Germans were developing their big guns instead of preparing to discard them; and if they had not, in characteristic German fashion, got tangled up in their own red tape they would have rendered the big guns useless before the armistice came.
GERMANY'S BIG MISTAKE.
"I prepared the plane they asked me for, finding that we could make use of old engines that were not reliable for fighting planes. All we asked of an engine was that it should fly for about four hours at the most. Of course each one of these airplanes, with its engine, would be blown up when the bomb exploded. The whole thing was not much more expensive than firing long range shells, and it would be far more sure and far more deadly.
"My plans were accepted by the authorities, and then the war office made its great mistake. It decided to make the airplane itself, and bungled along with the manufacture of the planes for many months. When they had finally turned out a few machines they found that they could not be depended upon.
"In the summer of 1918, three months before the armistice, they came to me and gave me a huge order for the wireless-steered airplane, I was just ready to manufacture them in wholesale quantities when the end of the war came. The airplanes would have worked havoc wherever they were used. It would have been like shooting huge shells hundreds of miles with a range that was absolutely accurate."
The Des Moines Capital (Des Moines, Iowa) - Thursday, December 04, 1919
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