American Fokker aircraft – an illustrated production history.

Towards the end of October 1920 Anthony Fokker booked passage for an orientation journey through the United States. From that moment on America would be his third home country, after the Netherlands and Germany. Within a few years he would expand the American Fokker company to become the largest aircraft factory in the world.
The crash of a Fokker F-10A trimotor on March 31, 1931, which killed famous football coach Knut Rockne of the Notre Dame University football team, caused an enormous publicity uproar. The adverse publicity over de Rockne-crash caused irrepairable damage to the sound reputation Fokker aircraft had enjoyed in the American aviation industry. Together with the world wide economic depression following the Wall Street crash of 1929, which hit the aviation indusrty very hard, this meant the end of Fokker aircraft construction the United States. On August 19, 1931, the Fokker-name was dropped.
By way of a series of complicated mergers and stock transaction, the core of the Fokker company was ultimately owned by North American Aviation Inc. What had begun in 1925 as the Atlantic Aircraft Corporation, had 20 years later develloped in to one of the largest American aircraft manufacturers, which during peak periods in World War Two, had a work force of 91,000.
Although the book is in Dutch, the production histories of the individual Fokker aircraft are very easy to read and understand for non-Dutch readers. Apart from that, the book is illustrated with almost 550 photographs.