Editing Fokker Scourge (section)

===Analysis===

[[File:FokkerCaricature.jpg|thumb|Caricature of Fokker {{lang|de|Eindecker}} published in ''Flight'' for 3 February 1916, satirising exaggerated accounts of its capabilities in other publications.<ref>{{citation |url=http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1916/1916%20-%200103.html |work=Flight |title=Deadly Fokker |via= Flightglobal Archive |access-date= 13 September 2014|date=3 February 1916 |volume=VIII |number=371 |page=103}}</ref>]]
Among British politicians and journalists who grossly exaggerated the material effects of the "Scourge" were the eminent pioneering aviation journalist C.{{nbsp}}G. Grey, founder of ''[[The Aeroplane]]'', one of the first aviation magazines and Noel Pemberton Billing, a [[Royal Naval Air Service]] (RNAS) pilot, notably unsuccessful aircraft designer and manufacturer and a Member of Parliament from March 1916.<ref name="Kennett 1991, p. 110"/> Their supposed object was the replacement of the B.E.2c with better aircraft but it took the form of an attack on the RFC command and the Royal Aircraft Factory.<ref name="Franks p. 1"/> C.{{nbsp}}G. Grey had orchestrated a campaign against the Royal Aircraft Factory in the pages of ''The Aeroplane'', going back to its period as the Balloon Factory, well before it had produced any heavier-than-air aircraft.<ref>Hare 1990, P. 29</ref>

Before the unsuitability of the B.E.2c for aerial combat was exposed by the first Fokker aces, criticism was not primarily aimed at the technical quality of Royal Aircraft Factory aircraft but because a government body was competing with private industry. When the news of the Fokker monoplane fighters reached him in late 1915, Grey was quick to blame the problem on orders for equipment that the latest developments had rendered obsolete. Grey did not suggest alternative aircraft, even supposing that the rapid development of aviation technology during the war could have been foreseen. Pemberton Billing also blamed the initially poor performance of British aircraft manufacturers on what he saw as the favouritism shown by the RFC, an arm of the British Army, towards the Royal Aircraft Factory, which, while nominally civilian, was also part of the army. Pemberton Billing claimed that,

{{bquote| ... hundreds, nay thousands of machines have been ordered which have been referred to by our pilots as "Fokker Fodder" ... I would suggest that quite a number of our gallant officers in the Royal Flying Corps have been rather murdered than killed.<ref>Hare 1990, p. 91.</ref>}}

Even among writers who recognised the hysteria of this version of events, this picture of the Fokker Scourge gained considerable currency during the war and afterwards. In 1996 Peter Grosz wrote,

{{quote|The epithet ''Fokker Fodder'' was coined by the British to describe the fate of their aircraft under the guns of the Fokker monoplanes, but given [its] acknowledged mediocrity, it comes as something of a shock to realise how abysmal the level of British aircraft performance, pilot training and aerial tactics must have been....<ref name="Grosz 1996, p. 5"/>}}