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Heinrich Friedrich August Lübbe was a passionate technician who
was searching a lifelong for new innovations. Initially being a watchmaker
and later a mechanical engineer, he ran experiments in precision mechanics
already in 1908, at the time he was owner of the first movie theater in
Utrecht, Netherlands. One year later he met the leading French aviators of
that time in Paris and decided to become an "aviateur" too. After
his flight training at Rumpler in Berlin, Lübbe obtained his pilots license
with the number 134 on November 17, 1911. In 1912 he participated at an
experiment to transport the first official German airmail, flying an
Etrich-Rumpler Taube. In 1913 he set a world record for oversea flights
to Argentina which made him popular under the name of "The
La-Plata-flyer". This world record eventually lead to export
sales of Rumpler monoplanes in South-America.
Before several life-threatening crashes and his successfull participation in
the national flight fund-raising drive (Nationalflugspende) of 1913, Lübbe
tried - in co-operation with several aircraft constructors - to become
an independant businessman. In 1914 he then decided to accept an occupation
at the company of his friend Anthony Fokker. After WW1 ended, Lübbe continued to develope
aircraft weapons and founded the wellknown Arado aircraft works in
1926.
Officially being hired as a flight instructor in Schwerin, he was in fact of
a much higher importance to Fokker in questions regarding the aircraft
armament because of the longstanding research he did before. He
too had reconized that the best solution for
a fighter pilot was it to give the pilot the
possibility to aim with the weapon mounted on the nose of the aircraft at his
target, if he wanted to make efficient use of his weapon. He
realized a technically sophisticated system, allowing to control the cadence of shooting
in a way that only a shot was fired when no propeller blade was in front of the machine
guns muzzle. This synchronisation system was called "The Interruptor
Gear".
After revealing the secret of the enemy, the Germans made tests
with the propeller of Garros' aircraft.
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Because a German machinegun was used
for the test, the harder German steel jacket ammunition destroyed the
propeller so they needed a better solution. At that moment Fokker came on
stage. Major Hermann Thomsen - since March the new chief of the Field
Aviation - recommended to engage Fokker because at that time only
Fokker produced aircraft resembling much those of the enemy. Thomsen
recommended Fokker despite of the doubts the German Military leadership
expressed regarding safety of this new weapon system. It was in fact true
that Fokkers aircraft looked much similar to the enemy types because Fokker
had copied the Morane Saulnier monoplanes already since 1913. The copying of
aircraft types developed by other was nothing unusual at the beginning of
the 20th century. Anthony Fokker however made smart use of that
possibility just at the right moment. Fokkers copy of the French
Morane-Saulnier monoplane from 1913 made history as it became the prototype
of the very first fighter aircraft of the world.
How Fokker succeed in the creation of the copy is impossible to reasearch in
detail because to much data was either lost over the years or never
recorded. It is assumed that Fokker - as well as many other German aircraft
constructors - was much impressed by the flights of the Frenchman Edmond
Audemars on a Morane-Saulnier monoplane in Berlin. Fokker then secretly made
raw sketches of the aircraft. Because the sketches did not suffice to reveal
the secrets of the extremely light and agile aircraft it is assumed that
Fokker traveled to Paris by the end of 1913, searching for an aircraft of
that type. It is furthermore assumed that he found a badly damaged machine,
buying it for the low price of only 500.- Mark. Fokker is supposed to have
ordered to transport the wreck to Schwerin without informing the
manufacturer nor paying any licence fees, where it got repaired in a
strictly guarded shed. Because of the lack of a working Gnôme rotary engine
Fokker then installed a copy manufactured by the Oberursel works from
Frankfurt.
After the first test flights was made, Fokker ordered the disassembly of the
machine to obtain excact models for the construction of a slightly modified
copy. The (still unarmed) Fokker monoplane type M.5L was born (L=long)! He then
married the interrupter gear to it and created the famous Fokker
singleseater.
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Picture postcard of Anthony Fokker in his E5L monoplane.
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