Anthony Fokker: The Flying Dutchman Who Shaped American Aviation

468 Pages·2014·36.22 MB·English

by  Marc Dierikx

Cover
Title Page
Copyright
1 NEW YORK, NEW YORK DECEMBER 1939
2 JAVA, NETHERLANDS EAST INDIES APRIL 1890
3 NAARDEN, HOLLAND MARCH 1910
4 MAINZ, GERMANY JULY 1910
5 HAARLEM, HOLLAND AUGUST 1911
6 BERLIN, GERMANY MAY 1912
7 ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA SEPTEMBER 1912
8 SCHWERIN, GERMANY JUNE 1913
9 STENAY, FRANCE JUNE 1915
10 SAINT-QUENTIN, FRANCE AUGUST 1918
11 BERLIN, GERMANY NOVEMBER 1918
12 HAARLEM, HOLLAND MARCH 1919
13 NEW YORK, NEW YORK NOVEMBER 1920
14 AMSTERDAM, HOLLAND JUNE 1923
15 DETROIT, MICHIGAN OCTOBER 1925
16 TETERBORO, NEW JERSEY APRIL 1927
17 NEW YORK, NEW YORK FEBRUARY 1929
18 NEW YORK, NEW YORK JULY 1931
19 THE HAGUE, HOLLAND NOVEMBER 1933
20 MONTAUK POINT, LONG ISLAND SEPTEMBER 1935
21 ST. MORITZ, SWITZERLAND JANUARY 1937
22 NEW YORK, NEW YORK JUNE 1938
23 WESTERVELD, HOLLAND FEBRUARY 1940
24 SCHWERIN, GERMANY A CENTURY LATER
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
DECEMBER 1939
Among the shopping public, the heavyset, middle-aged man wearing his suit in a
state of disarray, an advancing baldness hidden under the brim of his hat, does not
immediately stand out. That this is the world’s first aviation multimillionaire is not
apparent by sight. The streets are busy in New York this first day of December 1939.
Although the war in Europe—now three months old—is far away, New Yorkers
hasten to department stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and John Wanamaker. For
weeks they have been luring customers with advertisements that this may well be
the last time they stock imported luxury items. Expectations are that the Christmas
sales will be 10 percent higher than in 1938.1 The splendid fall weather is beautiful
for shopping; in anticipation of winter, which has been exceptionally slow to set in,
New York relishes an autumn that goes on and on. Indeed, it is so warm and dry that
city mayor Fiorello La Guardia has announced special precautions to supply
Manhattan’s trees and plants with extra water—something normally done only in
the heat of summer.
La Guardia, nicknamed “the little flower” after his first name, has an eye for
nature. Since his appointment as mayor almost six years ago, he has had Central
Park restructured and replanted. And it is not just flowers and plants that he loves.
As an aviation enthusiast, former pilot, and bomber commander in the Great War,
he is also the driving force behind the creation of a new airport. After two years of
construction and $40 million in costs, this is his big day: at three minutes past
midnight he is to welcome the first scheduled airliner—a flight from Chicago.2
With this event the New York Municipal Airport will officially become operational
on the beach of the borough of Queens. Several leading personalities from the world
of aviation have been invited to witness the event. Among this select group is
Anthony Fokker.
It is already past midday when the porter opens the door of the former Viceroy Hotel
at Park Avenue and 59th Street for Fokker. In the luxurious hallway, where marble
and gold glisten in the lamplight, his appearance seems slightly incongruous. Yet he
feels at ease in this environment. He knows the building, although it has changed
much since its grand opening in 1929. In the wake of the Great Depression, the
owners reconditioned the thirty-two-story building. Its 525 rooms have been made
into apartments to be sold individually. What has not been sold has been leased.
Even Delmonico’s, a well-known specialty restaurant once frequented by wealthy
New Yorkers, is no more.
It is quiet in the hallway when Fokker reports to the reception desk. In his
somewhat awkward, Dutch-riddled English, he tells the receptionist he has come for
his appointment with doctor Robert Cushing. In anticipation of the gathering at the
airport this evening, he has traveled from his house in Nyack in upstate New York to
seek release from his persistent splitting headaches. From the lovely village on the
southern bank of the Hudson River, the drive to Manhattan has taken some forty-
five minutes. The road through the rolling, wooded landscape high above the river is
well known to him. Since moving into his mansion Undercliff Manor in the summer
of 1937, he has often driven this route. His old house in the woods near Alpine
appears unchanged as he passes. At Brookside Cemetery, just outside Englewood,
New Jersey, much has remained the same as well; from the road he can see Violet’s
grave on the high grounds, where he buried his second wife after she met such a
tragic death. He has driven here hundreds of times, when he still had his factories at
the Teterboro Airport and in nearby Passaic, New Jersey. His German companies
closed long before. Only the Dutch factory is left, far away in Amsterdam. He
interferes with it as little as possible and prefers to spend his time on one of his boats.
Outside Englewood, Fokker turns left across the new George Washington Bridge
that leads to New York. From the high bridge he can see Riverside Drive with his
former apartment on the corner of 101st Street, which he abandoned after his wife’s
death in 1929.
He arrives late for his appointment with Dr. Cushing. Being late is something
Anthony Fokker relishes—the prerogative of an homme arrivé. Even President
Warren Harding had to wait thirty minutes for him at the White House seventeen
years ago.3 There is no need to rush anyway: Cushing has seen him often enough.
His ailment has been the same for years: chronic sinusitis, a condition he has picked
up after many years of flying in open cockpits. Today his face is again taut.
Breathing through the nose exhausts him. It almost appears as if the congestion in
his forehead presses on his eyes more than usual. His whole head feels heavy, and
even his neck is rigid.
Doctor Cushing’s practice is pleasantly light and spacious. Its low-slung sofa
suggests an ordinary living room rather than a doctor’s office. This is no coincidence;
Cushing caters to an affluent clientele and wants his patients to feel at ease. His
specialty, osteopathy, is a relatively new, alternative treatment in 1939, aimed at
providing relief for patients suffering from reduced flexibility of body tissues and
bone structure. The treatment involves special manual techniques.
As is customary, Cushing asks his patient to lie down on the sofa. He will
manipulate Anthony’s skull, vertebrae, forehead, and nose with his hands. These
maneuvers are meant to improve the circulation and the pulsations of brain fluid,
stimulating the cerebral membrane and the membrane of the spinal marrow. The
technique should—at least temporarily—reduce the headaches and make the patient
feel better. Although the manipulations are not painful in themselves, their duration
makes the treatment unpleasant. Therefore it is better to sedate the patient, so that
he will be able to relax fully. Cushing applies nitrous oxide (known as laughing gas),
a commonly used anesthetic that is both fast and effective. Anthony receives a cap
over his nose and mouth and is instructed to take a deep breath to relax. A wondrous
feeling of tiredness descends upon him, and within seconds he floats into a deep
sleep.
With great care, Dr. Cushing then feels and manipulates Anthony’s skull. For an
hour his hands apply pressure in several places to equilibrate the bodily functions
and restore the mobility of the bone structures. When the treatment is over, he waits
for the patient to wake up. Today it takes longer than expected—much longer.
Whatever the physician tries to bring his patient around, nothing happens. Hours
pass. Finally there appears to be no other option but to call for an ambulance, which
brings him to Murray Hill Hospital, a mile away in midtown Manhattan. This
hospital caters to the rich and famous who live in the Murray Hill district. Cushing
holds a position there. While preparations begin at New York Airport for the landing
of the first scheduled flight, Anthony Fokker sails into the undetermined sphere
between heaven and earth.
In the days that follow, worries mount at Murray Hill Hospital.4 Examinations
reveal that Fokker’s loss of consciousness is not so much an unforeseen effect of the
anesthetic, but rather is directly linked to a much-feared bacterial infection,
pneumococcus meningitis, which causes encephalitis. The bacteria must have
invaded from Anthony’s sinuses and colonized his nose and throat cavities,
subsequently entering his bloodstream. Now it has affected the membrane that
normally protects the brain and the spinal cord. Severe headaches and stiffness of the
neck are the symptoms that accompany this condition. In 1939 an effective
treatment does not yet exist, although experiments with an antimeningitis serum
have been conducted by the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research since 1904.5
Failing a serum, the disease persists, pulling the patient into a downward spiral of
semiconsciousness and unconsciousness. The complications increase: in Holland,
newspapers report of pneumonia on top of everything else.6 Semi-oblivious, Anthony
Fokker is fighting for his life.
JAVA, NETHERLANDS EAST INDIES
APRIL 1890
It had taken Anna Fokker-Diemont half the day to reach the government hospital in
Blitar with her horse and carriage. The wet western monsoon had taken hold of Java,
and the roads were covered in puddles and mud. For months the clouds hung low
around the slopes of the Kelud volcano, where she had her home on the coffee
plantation Njoenjoer with her husband, Herman. She had chosen a dry day for her
trip to Blitar, and thanks to the dispersing clouds she could now enjoy the landscape
with its rice terraces. The route was beautiful. The first part, along the horse track
that the planters had built connecting the model gardens of Kali Tapak and the tea
and rubber plantations of Gogo Niti and Senggrong, had taken her to the village of
Wlingi. From Wlingi the great Postal Road curved for some twelve miles through
desas, across bridges, and through rice fields and dry land.1
Blitar, one of the strongholds of the Dutch colonial administration on eastern
Java, was a quiet town with about nine thousand inhabitants. Its wide avenues
joined at the central grass square, which was lined with trees. The town was known
for a mild climate that lent itself to the recovery of the sick and ailing. A Dutch
civilian physician resided at the government hospital on the edge of town. Here
modern medical care could be provided to European women in childbirth.
It was best for expectant mothers to make the journey early, rather than await the
first signals of labor on a plantation. At Njoenjoer, Anna would have been dependent
upon the assistance of the doekoen baji, the native midwife. Midwives were few in
number in the Kediri district, and Anna, like other Dutch women, had no faith in
them whatsoever.2 To give birth to her first baby, her daughter Catharina
(nicknamed “Toos”) she had traveled all the way to the district capital Kediri to be
certain of the services of Herman van Buuren, one of the few European doctors in
the area, who specialized in childbirth issues.3 Now she was to have her second child.
Fortunately, everything went well on Sunday, April 6, 1890, and after some days
recuperating in a Blitar hotel, Anna returned home to Njoenjoer as a proud mother
with her infant son “Tony”—Anthony Herman Gerard Fokker in full.
Now that the rain season was nearing its end, the intensity of the precipitation
lessened by the week. In June the dry eastern monsoon would make Kediri’s coffee
shrubs bloom, covering the volcano’s planted slopes in white flowers that spread an
intoxicating sweet smell. Then the red coffee berries would ripen until October,
when it would be time to harvest them before the rains returned in November.
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, coffee growing had boomed in the
Dutch East Indies. In Europe coffee had become a popular drink. Growing and
trading it was lucrative, since this took place under the protective umbrella of
colonial rule. The Netherlands Trading Company (Nederlandsche Handel
Maatschappij, or NHM) had obtained a monopoly on exports in 1824. Until recent
years growing export crops had been the prerogative of the state, but in 1870 new
agricultural laws had come into force that allowed for private farms and plantations.
After tea, sugar, and rubber, coffee growing had seen a quick rise since then. The
climate on the volcano slopes of eastern Java proved eminently suited for it. In fact,
the district around the provincial town of Kediri had effectively become known as
“coffee country.”
Without exception these coffee farmers were Dutch. Most of them had settled
with the support of the NHM, which provided capital and supervised businesses.
Coffee plantations were often quite large agricultural estates of 250 to 1,000 acres.
Planters obtained land cheaply, under government leasehold contracts for a seventy-
five-year term, as the colonial authorities claimed ownership of all the island’s
nonproductive soil. Annual turnover in such an enterprise would easily run into
several hundred thousand guilders (more than $100,000). Planters often had two
hundred to three hundred employees working for them, mostly native people.4
One such planter was Herman Fokker, descended from a wealthy family of
shipowners and merchants from Middelburg in the southwest of Holland. For many