Western Air
Express Fokker F-10 NC4458
(c/n 1000)
In 1928 WAE was
selected to operate first class passenger service from Los Angeles to
San
Franscisco. To
fly this, and to boost the passenger capacity on the Salt Lake City
route, a
fleet of 16
F-10s was ordered from Atlantic Aircraft Corporation. Seen above
at Grand Central
Air Terminal in Glendale is the first of these
machines. The American Fokkers were orginally
assembled under license by the Atlantic
Aircraft Corporation at Teterboro Airport in
New Jersey.
All components were shipped out from
Holland. By the
end of the 1920s the parent company
restructured the U.S.
business with new capital and shareholders and formed the
Fokker Aircraft
Corporation of America. Shortly
afterwards WAE gained a majority interest in this new
corporation
and Harris Hanshue
became president of it as well as of WAE. Busy man, wasn't
he? In May 1929
General Motors acquired a 41% stake in Fokker
Aircraft providing much needed
capital. (This is an
impoprtant fact as we will see later). Eddie
Rickenbacker
became director of sales (also important).
Fokker itself became a
division of GM's General Aviation Manufacturing Corporation and, in the
event, ended its U.S. operation in 1931 due
to lack of sales in the Deprerssion and also to the much-
publized crash on 31 march 1931 of a TWA F-10a in which football legend
Knute Rockne was killed.
The photograph
below shows passengers embarking on NC582K (c/n 1042). Both
images were
acquired from the Western Air
Lines archives.