Anthony Fokker Signed 1st Ed 1931 Flying Dutchman The Life of Anthony Fokker HC

Up For Sale Today is

Flying Dutchman
The Life of Anthony Fokker

by

Anthony Fokker and Bruce Gould

Hardcover. 8vo.  Published by Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1931. xii, 282 pgs. Illustrated with black and white plates. Number 185 in limited edition of 215 copies. States that "Of these, none are for sale". Signed and inscribed by Anthony Fokker on the frontispiece.

Bound in cloth boards with titles present to the spine and gilt stamping present to the front board. Boards have shelf-wear present to the extremities (spine is lightly faded along the spine). Previous owner's bookplate present to the front pastedown. Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid.

From 1918 until the early 1930s, the most prominent aircraft manufacturer in the world was Anthony G. Fokker of Holland, aka the "Flying Dutchman." The inventor of a device that synchronized machine gun fire with propellers so that an aviator could use his machine gun without shooting himself out of the sky, Fokker is generally credited as the father of aerial combat. And yet, despite this distinction, he remains largely unknown outside the purview of aviation history buffs. That is mainly because, by the mid-1930s, the aircraft giant--whose production line and business interests spanned from Germany to Holland to the U.S.--was already fading into relative obscurity in the shadow of the fast-growing American aviation industry.