Focke's helicopters proved vertical flight and auto-rotation concepts, and gained even more notoriety when German aviatrix, Hanna Reitsch (flying in the picture above), flew one indoors at the Deutschlandhalle sports stadium in Berlin in 1938. The first of two Fw-61s prototypes flew on 26 June 1936 with pilot, Ewald Rohlfs. A small propeller mounted in front of the radial was used for cooling only, not thrust. A 1935 government order allowed Focke to develop a full-scale prototype using the airframe of a training aircraft (Focke-Wulf's Fw-44) to mount rotors on tube steel outriggers on either side of the fuselage and to house a radial engine driving the rotors through gears and shafts.Įach rotor consisted of three articulated and tapered blades employing cyclic pitch, a core concept of helicopter control. ![]() ![]() He built a model in 1934 to explore a twin-rotor configuration with articulated rotor blades. Professor Henrich Focke started designing what would become the Fw-61 in 1932, using experience gained with autogyros from British maker, Cierva Autogiro. Germany made rapid progress in vertical flight in the 1930s with the design and construction of the Focke-Wulf FW-61, generally regarded as the first functional helicopter.
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