After the outbreak of the first World War, Anthony Fokker began work on a new single-seater fighter plane. Fokker was convinced that it was vitally important to develop a system where the pilot could fire a machine gun while flying a plane. After the Morane-Saulnier that Roland Garros was flying crashed at Courtrai on April 19, 1915, Fokker was able to inspect these deflector blades and create a system that used a timing chain to shoot between the propeller blades without shooting them off. Fokker eventually settled in the United States where he established the Fokker Aircraft Corporation. Anthony Fokker died in 1939.