Gerhard Fieseler

Gerhard Fieseler (April 15 1896 - September 1 1987) was a German World War I flying ace, aerobatics champion, and aircraft designer and manufacturer.

Fieseler was born in Glesch, the son of a printer. He joined the Air Service of the German Army in 1915 and despite a crash during training, was assigned as an observation pilot the following year. In 1917, he qualified as a fighter pilot and was posted to the Macedonian front, where he was eventually credited with nineteen aerial victories. He was awarded the Golden Military Merit Cross and the Iron Cross, first and second class.

Following the war, he returned to printing, but yearned to return to flying. In 1926, he closed his print shop in Eschweiler and became a flight instructor with the Raab-Katzenstein aircraft company in Kassel and continued to hone his flying skills, becoming an accomplished stunt pilot. In 1927, he performed a particularly daring routine in Zürich and started to command increasingly high fees for appearances. In 1928, he designed his own stunt plane, the Fieseler F1, built by Raab-Katzenstein. He also designed Raab-Katzenstein RK-26 Tigerschwalbe aircraft in the end of 1920s which was offered and sold to a Swedish company called AB Svenska Järnvägverkstaderna (ASJA), which build 25 of the type for Swedish Air Force in the beginning of 1930s.

In 1930, Raab-Katzenstien was bankrupt, and Fieseler decided to strike out on his own. Using money he had been saving from his aerobatics, he bought the Segelflugzeugbau Kassel sailplane factory and renamed it Fieseler Flugzeugbau. Although he continued with some sailplane manufacturing, from 1932, he set up to start manufacturing sports planes of his own design. In one of these aircraft, he went on to win the inaugural World Aerobatic Championship in Paris in 1934, taking home a FF 100,000 prize, which he invested into the company.

A NSDAP member, Fieseler won contracts to licence-build military aircraft for the new Luftwaffe in 1935. Real success would come the following year, when he won a design contest for an STOL observation plane that he then went on to produce as the Fieseler Fi 156 "Storch".

Following the war, Fieseler spent some time in US custody. When he was released, he re-opened part of this factory and spent some years building automotive components. He also published an autobiography, "Meine Bahn am Himmel (My Road in the Sky)".

Fieseler died in Kassel, aged 91.

An aerobatic manoeuvre is named after him.