While Anthony Fokker was able to devise the first true interrupter gear, unfortunately it was doomed by poor metallurgy which caused the mechanism to fail with fatal results.
Die Fliegertruppen des deutschen Kaiserreiches (German Imperial Air Service) was desperate to claim air superiority and Fokker was desperate to maintain his good name. The only answer was to re-engineer his
Eindecker in a pusher configuration so the all important machine gun could be aimed along with the aircraft.
The radical new fighter was dubbed the Fokker
Pfeil or Arrow given its javelin-like appearance. Test flights were successful but it remained to be seen how the new prototype would fair in combat against the enemy.
A dashing, mysterious pilot, one Rittmeister Rückwärts volunteered to take the new Fokker fighter on its first combat patrol.
With the blessing of his superiors, a flight plan was worked out.
Unfortunately, Rittmeister Rückwärts' sense of direction would prove to be the Fokker
Pfeil's undoing.
The aircraft performed flawlessly, but pilots failed again and again to meet the enemy. They were so used to tractor aircraft that they were unable to fly the new pusher in the correct direction.
This led to failure and financial ruin for Anthony Fokker who was forced to move back to Holland and take a job as a mechanic for the Tilt-A-Whirl ride at the Amsterdam Kiddie Fair, his too-far-ahead-of-its-time fighter all but forgotten.
Brian da Basher
