The Airplane - Jay Spenser [51]
Safety is important, but that alone did not drive the world to thick wings. Instead it was greater speed, which could be obtained only with aerodynamically clean wings.
World War I was raging and the Central Powers needed more weapons. Germany’s wartime authorities contracted with Junkers for airplanes but worried about his lack of experience building flying machines. To help him come up to speed on the manufacturing front, they brought in Anthony Fokker.
Nicknamed der fliegende Holländer (the Flying Dutchman), Anthony Fokker was the dashing young man at the helm of Germany’s most productive airplane company. He earned lasting fame during the war by building the all-red triplane in which Germany’s “Red Baron”—top ace Manfred von Richthofen—scored many of his eighty aerial victories. A clever inventor, Fokker also revolutionized aerial warfare by inventing the synchronizing gear that allowed machine guns to fire through spinning propellers without hitting the blades.
Elderly Junkers had little use for Fokker, the twentysomething wunderkind. Fokker likewise chafed under the forced collaboration and was anxious to get back to his own company. Both men went their separate ways as quickly as possible.
From that brief association, however, Fokker took away Junkers’ utterly invaluable idea of thick wings. His company would apply this knowledge to three of its fighters: the Dr.I triplane, the D.VII biplane, and the D.VIII (E.V) monoplane. The best fighter plane of the war, the Fokker D.VII was also technologically the most influential after hostilities ceased. Its formula would sire a line of successful commercial airliners between the world wars. These would fly in many nations, including the United States.
Knute Rockne was head football coach at the University of Notre Dame some 90 miles (145 kilometers) south of Chicago. In a dozen thrilling years, Rockne led his college team to 105 victories with just 12 losses and 5 ties. By 1931—fresh off a fifth undefeated season and sixth national championship—he was hands down American football’s most famous coach.
On March 31, 1931, the forty-three-year-old Norwegian American waited to board a Transcontinental and Western Air (TWA) flight at Kansas City, Missouri, where he had visited his sons. He was headed for Los Angeles, having been summoned to Hollywood to participate in the production of The Spirit of Notre Dame, a feature film based on his team’s exploits.
Located along the Missouri River, the Kansas City airport was an open field with a few Spartan buildings. Americans traveled by train back then, and the nation’s fledgling air carriers catered only to the wealthy and those who placed a premium on speed. Hollywood did, and so the studio had sent Rockne a plane ticket to Los Angeles via Wichita and points west.
The flight arrived. Knute Rockne and his fellow travelers boarded the Fokker F-10A, a high-wing trimotor with seating for a dozen passengers. The engines sputtered to life and the plane trundled to the far end of the field. Turning into the wind, it roared down the grass and clambered into the air.
For more than an hour the Fokker flew steadily southwestward. Suddenly a wing broke away. The stricken craft plunged to a Kansas wheat field below, killing all aboard.
Knute Rockne’s name was a household word across America. His values—humility, generosity, and a commitment to hard work—were universally admired. The national outcry over his untimely death reverberated in the media, lending urgency to the accident investigation. Speculation initially focused on an encounter with a violent squall. However, no thunderstorms had been reported in the area. Then as the wreckage was examined a more sinister