Once the largest aircraft manufacturer in the world, Fokker are now perhaps best known for supplying the German Army during the first World War. The company wasn’t actually German though, instead being founded by Dutchman Anthony Fokker in 1912 whilst he studied in Germany, before moving back to the Netherlands in 1919.
The company that once supplied Germany then fought against them in World War 2, before the Germans invaded the Netherlands and requisitioned Fokker’s factories.
The bombing by the Allies that followed completely destroyed Fokker’s manufacturing facilities, and with a glut of cheap ‘lightly used’ aircraft available at the end of the war the company barely survived. But survive it did, right up until 1996 when the might of Boeing and Airbus finally put an end to Fokker aircraft production.
These two wonderful models depict Fokker in their glory days, when they designed arguably the best fighter aircraft in the world for the German Army during the First World War (and we won’t begrudge them that as the First World War was, as previously explained here, completely pointless).
Built by Dread Pirate Wesley they are a Fokker D.VII and Fokker Eindecker E.IV, both recreated (and photographed) beautifully in mini-figure scale. There’s more to see of each aircraft (plus many more) at Wesley’s brilliant ‘Lego Aircraft’ Flickr album – click the link to take off.