WAR POSTERS

In keeping with the theme of this issue, our featured poster is a dramatic advertisement for the Fokker aeroplane company, illustrating the Fokker Eindecker.

The Fokker aeroplane company was established in 1912 by Dutchman Anthony Fokker who moved to Germany where he saw better business opportunities. Here, at Schwerin on the outskirts of Berlin, he set up his factory and began producing aircraft which would go on to become synonymous with the Imperial German Air Service and the iconic machines of the war in the air over the Western Front. These, of course, included the infamous Fokker Eindecker aircraft (I – IV) and the Fokker Dreidecker, or DR.I.

Notwithstanding the neutrality of the Netherlands during the First World War, Dutchman Fokker enthusiastically embraced his role in designing and building aircraft for what had become his ‘adopted’ country and where he had chosen to base his business.

Despite setbacks in some of his varied designs and ventures, Anthony Fokker’s Eindecker had already become one of the most feared of all adversaries for Allied fliers during the early part of the war. This was not least of all because of the revolutionary development of the synchronised interrupter gear on this aircraft – a piece of equipment which allowed a machine gun to be fired through the rotating propeller blades by momentarily interrupting the firing of the gun when a blade was directly in front of the muzzle. It was a gamechanger which allowed for a great degree of accuracy in aiming at enemy aircraft.

In this dramatic advertising poster for Fokker, we see a menacing head-on view of a Fokker Eindecker, its IMG08 machine gun clearly visible pointing through the propeller arc in front of the intrepid and lantern-jawed aviator. As if to emphasise the prowess of the aircraft, a ‘Pour-le-merite’ (‘Blue Max’) award is incorporated within the poster’s design.

After the war, Fokker returned to his native country, taking with him a vast quantity of aircraft, engines, materials, equipment and components in breach of the terms of the Versailles Treaty, re-establishing his company in the Netherlands.

Fokker was arguably one of the best-known aircraft companies in the world, finally going out of business as the result of bankruptcy in 1996.