I expect that if you asked anyone to give the name that first came into their heads when you mentioned aviation in World War I, a huge majority would say 'Fokker'. A word synonymous with German Fighters, (in spite of the man himself being a neutral Dutchman), and a concept not equalled in World War II or since. I therefore approached this book with some diffidence, as I am sure that there are so many Fokker experts out there, that I am wary of making any technical comments, for fear of being shot down in flames for my ignorance.

Having said that, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this beautifully researched, produced and illustrated work, and am now feeling astonished that Fokker has the high reputation he has. I found myself comparing him with Louis Bleriot, and his losing in the comparison. Fokker's early work was plagiaristic - he copied the Morane Parasol - and he stayed with wing warping instead of ailerons for far too long. I suppose his fame rests on introducing an interrupter gear to enable machine guns to be fired through the arc of the propeller, the Eindekker, the Triplane and the superb D. VII. Leaman's book tells me that the interrupter gear was unreliable, Boelke and others being prone to shooting off their propellers, that the Eindekker (of which just over 400 were built) was generally speaking too heavy, with an unreliable engine as well as weapons system. The Triplane was inspired by the RNAS Sopwith one and, by the time it came into service, obsolete.

So why is he still so famous? Mainly because he was a great self publicist and entrepreneur, and a shrewd businessman, unlike Bleriot, who was an engineer first. Like Bleriot, he stayed close to the Military to try to win orders, and started flying schools with the same object; they both always test flew their prototypes before anyone else; they both knew to cut their losses and not pursue fruitless designs; Bleriot saw the future in Civil Aviation and it nearly finished him; Fokker did not; he saw the immediate future away from Germany, and smuggled vast quantities of materiel back to his homeland when the balloon went up.

Of course, he later developed civil aircraft, but that is outside the scope of this work. I find myself still puzzled, but urge you to read this book. It is packed with everything you could wish to know, and wonderful pictures of most of it. It has some great appendices; the one about the British Military Attach‚'s spying activities in Berlin in 1912 regarding the Fokker monoplane, is priceless. I found a fault; on page 44 there are three photographs of the same plane. On the last, its number has changed from 210/16 to 210/15; this is the best I can do.

Paul Leaman's next book will be about Fokker Triplanes. It will have to be very good to equal this one.