Contrails: Fokker’s Over West Virginia
By Steve Weaver
After World War I, Anthony H. G. Fokker (1890–1939), the famous Dutch aircraft designer whose fighter planes were the scourge of Allied airmen throughout the War, also designed and built a series of successful civilian airliners during the 1920s.
One of his two American assembly plants was established in 1928 in Glen Dale, Marshel County in the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia. An adjacent grass landing strip, now named Fokker Field and still used for local sports flying, was the site of Fokker the test flights. At its peak, the Fokker plant employed 500 people from Glen Dale, Moundsville, and from the nearby Wheeling area. Fokker’s best-known airliner, used by airlines throughout the world, was the high-wing Tri Motor F-10A manufactured at Glen Dale.
In October 1927, Ohio Valley newspapers announced in bold headlines that a million dollar airplane project was to give employment to 1,000 at Glen Dale. Expectations were raised that Marshall and Ohio counties would become as mighty as Detroit or Akron. Sustained by the world-class reputation and marketability of the Fokker product, Wheeling interests enthusiastically gathered $100,000 to secure the option. Moundsville business leaders quickly got behind the capital investment program advanced by Evan G. Roberts, raising $80,000 in nine days. When combined with a $70,000 bond issue, the investors had the $260,000 necessary to build the plant.Ground was broken for the new plant in January 1928. By early spring, the concrete floor was poured, the brick walls were nearly finished, and the contractor was installing the huge factory windows under which assembly teams would soon begin their labors. Anthony Fokker visited the construction site frequently to supervise the work.On December 13, 1928, Marshall County saw Fokker’s first West Virginia-built airplane embark on its maiden voyage. It was piloted by Captain Grisson E. Haynes, chief test pilot for Fokker, accompanied by H. G. Snyder, an engineering inspector employed by Pan American Airways, purchaser of the aircraft. Teams of men pushed open the accordion-style doors at the northern end of the factory, and the plane was towed into the daylight. Ignition of the three engines produced a distinctive oscillating sound from the combined output of 1,275 horsepower.Designated as the Fokker F-10, the stately airship was entirely handcrafted and was designed to carry 12 passengers in the comfort of “a private flying salon.” According to Bayard Young, an aviation historian and former employee of Fokker’s Marshall County operation, “With the exception of the engines, wheels, tires, and instruments, all parts of the planes were made in the Glen Dale plant.” Employed as a woodworker in the wing assembly department, Young relates that the huge wing of the Fokker F-10 airplane was constructed entirely of wood. Sheets of plywood of graduated thickness were glued together and wrapped around “spars,” lute-shaped ribs in the hollow core of the wing. Skilled laborers sculpted the airfoil using woodworking planes to carve out a dihedral angle, “sloping upward from the center.” The precision of this work was measured at 1/32 of an inch.
The wings were bolted to the fuselage, and the outboard engines were bolted to maple block sections built into the plywood wing. The F-10 aircraft utilized three Pratt and Whitney, 450hp Wasp engines calculated to achieve a cruising speed of 125mph at 4,000 feet. The fuel load of 900 gallons provided a range of 600 miles in 4.75 hours at 60 gallons per hour per engine. In his biography, The Flying Dutchman, Anthony Fokker states that he favored wood for the wings because it was easier for a pilot or mechanic to repair regardless of where the plane might be required to land. A wood wing can be repaired quickly whereas a metal one may entail many days of delay.
Throughout 1929, the plant produced one airplane every 12 days on average. According to accounts in the local press, orders for new aircraft were steady. At any given time, there were no less than 10 planes on back-order with anticipated sales of one hundred F-10’s annually. The primary customers were Universal Aviation, Pan American Airways, Western Air Express, and Transcontinental Air Transport, the latter two merging to form TWA. Numerous aircraft for the U.S. Army were also manufactured at Glen Dale, representing a variety of designs, including double and triple motored pursuit planes.
A series of spectacular successes in 1927 and 1928 added substantially to the confidence of local investors. Commander Richard Byrd piloted the Fokker Tri Motor, “Josephine Ford,” on a 1,360-mile trek over the North Pole, proving the reliability of the design. Byrd’s 1927 transatlantic flight in the Fokker “America” added to the image of speed and safety. In 1928, the Pacific Ocean was conquered in an Army Fokker C-2 flying between Oakland and Oahu; a Seattle pilot named Kingsford-Smith embarked on a flight around the world in the Fokker “Southern Cross,” and Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly the Atlantic in her Fokker Tri Motor, Friendship.
As the Fokker reputation for reliability grew stronger, other competitors such as Boeing, Douglas, Curtis, and Ford were forced, through competition, to advance the field of aviation still further. Fokker’s influence was as a lightning rod. He drew attention to the potential of commercial passenger airliners through the development of the F-10.With a steady supply of orders, officials at the Glen Dale plant voiced plans for an expansion. The airfield was also undergoing some changes as the parcel of land separating Fokker Field and Langin Field was being cleared to create a mile-long runway.Unfortunately, the halcyon days of 1929 were short lived. The lamentable demise of the entire manufacturing sector of American industry in the 1930s nipped Fokker’s dreams in the bud. In the final analysis, 58 passenger airliners plus numerous Army aircraft were produced at the Glen Dale plant, feeding the appetite of an emerging industry struggling to develop new technologies.The announcement that the Glen Dale facility would close came on September 30, 1931 after a valiant attempt to stay solvent. The reasons for its decline are two-fold, but the stock market crash of October 1929 was the primary factor in the loss of West Virginia’s first airplane company. Fokker stock, like all other industries, tumbled and fell. Fokker’s value slid from $54 before the crash, to $22 by year’s end.A backlog of orders sustained the Glen Dale operation throughout 1930, but “temporary layoffs” in 1931 led to suspension of activities after General Aviation Corporation bought Fokker Aircraft and moved the manufacturing equipment and skilled workers from Glen Dale to Baltimore. The promise of an aviation center, the million-dollar payroll, and the hopes of many investors were eclipsed by the spreading plague of economic collapse.The death of Notre Dame’s renowned football coach, Knute Rockne, while riding in a Fokker F-10 may have signaled the end of an era of the F-10 in particular and of wood-winged passenger aircraft in general. The March 31, 1931 crash that killed everyone aboard, including legendary Notre Dame football coach, Knute Rockne, was blamed on the plane’s design, and Fokker sales plummeted. In that accident, the main wing separated from the fuselage of the aircraft. Later analysis found that the pilot attempted to raise the nose of the aircraft too quickly when he encountered the poorly understood phenomenon of wind sheer.In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, however, Fokker’s competitors, including Henry Ford, seized upon the national feeling of shock and dismay to erode Fokker’s reputation and lay blame on his construction techniques. Even before investigators had determined the cause of the accident, Ford testified in hearings on Capitol Hill against composite construction airplanes. An advocate of all-metal aircraft, he argued that the time had come for the government to focus its support on all-metal airplanes such as those made by his company.
Fokker closed its Glen Dale operations in 1934, and the building was sold to the Louis Marx Toy Company. Their world famous toys were produced there for many years.
The grass runway is still maintained, and as a visitor taxies in, he will get a glimpse of the past when he sees the sign “Fokker Aircraft,” faintly remaining on the outside of the main building.
