Word: fokker
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...better formula is known for exploiting an autobiography than to provoke a squabble between the autobiographer and some other celebrity. Even the well-told story of so florid a subject as Anthony Herman Gerard ("Uncle Tony'') Fokker* would have created no great splash when it appeared last week had not the book contained some acid comments by Fokker about Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, and had not an astute press-agent pre-advised newsmen of those comments. The book made headlines last week for the passages in a scant ten pages...
Byrd's failure to take off for France before Lindbergh did is the first object of Fokker's scorn. Concerning the flight itself (in the Fokker-built America), Fokker dwells upon what airmen already knew: that the ability and steady nerve of Pilot Bernt Balchen were largely-if not solely-responsible for the right-side-up landing of the plane near Ver-Sur-Mer in France and the escape of the crew. Here he italicizes a sentence from Byrd's own book Skyward: "Balchen happened to be at the wheel...
...cause for Fokker's rancor suggests itself earlier in the same chapter, where he tells of selling his first trimotored plane to Byrd for the latter's North Pole flight of 1926 "on condition that the Fokker name would be left on it. Edsel Ford had liberally financed Byrd, still, I was somewhat surprised to hear later that the Fokker had somehow become Josephine Ford...
Sought out by newshawks last week, the scattered crew of the America made characteristic comments. Said Byrd in Little Rock, Ark.: "I have no objection to Mr. Fokker's saying that Balchen did the better job on the transatlantic flight than I did. I have always felt that way myself." Said Bernt Balchen, shy by nature and embarrassed by his present position as a Fokker testpilot: "I don't know where Tony got all his information; but there are no mistakes in it." From Noville in Los Angeles: "Byrd commanded, and the rest of us, including Balchen, took...
...tension under which such flights are carried out, as well as the swiftness of action that is required, make it hard to weigh exactly the relative value of each man to the party, especially since all those concerned are men of exceptional ability in their field. Whether or not Fokker's criticism of Byrd will prove justified remains to be seen. As a general rule, however, deprecation of this kind does more harm than good, providing the press with welcome scandal, and jarring considerably that hazy quantity known as public confidence...