Overview page of the Fokker Spiders

Many articles have been published about Anthony Fokker's first aircraft, the "Spin", since 1910, the year the first Spin was built.
Partly because most facts from this period are missing, many articles and book passages contradict each other.
Aircraft registrations, construction numbers and entries in aviation registers were not yet an issue at that time.
It is not known exactly how many Spiders were built, and it is also sometimes unclear when a Spider became an M (Militär flugzeug) type due to a number of modifications.

Sometimes such a Spin also had a double type designation.
There was also a lot of experimentation with engines; one model was first fitted with a 70 hp Argus engine, then a 100 hp Renault and then again an Argus, but this time with 100 hp.
Even in the still-existing Fokker Archives there are documents that contradict each other regarding the Spiders' account.

This also makes the type designation of the Spiders difficult to describe.
From existing documentation by aviation journalist Henri Hegener(ϯ), the following type of listing is the most obvious:

Spin 1, October 1910
Spin 2, May 1911
Spin 3, August 1911
1st Spin variant 1912
2nd Spin variant 1912
1st Spin variant 1913
2nd Spin variant 1913 (M-1)
3rd Spin variant 1913

Click on an image to go to the type's photo page