The Focke-Wulf Fw 61 was the first successful, practical, and fully controllable helicopter, first flown in 1936. It was also known as the Fa 61, as Focke began a new company — Focke-Achgelis — in 1937. On 9 February 1935, Focke received an order for the building of a prototype, which was designated the Fw 61; Focke referred to it as the F 61. Roluf Lucht of the technical office of the RLM extended the order for a second aircraft on 19 December 1935. The airframe was based on that of a well-tried training aircraft, the Focke-Wulf Fw 44 Stieglitz. In February 1938, the Fw 61 was demonstrated by Hanna Reitsch indoors at the Deutschlandhalle sports stadium in Berlin, Germany. It subsequently set several records for altitude, speed and flight duration culminating, in June 1938, with an altitude record of 3,427 m (11,243 ft), breaking the unofficial 605 m (1,985 ft) altitude record of the TsAGI 1-EA single lift-rotor helicopter from the Soviet Union set on 14 August 1932, and a straight-line flight record of 230 km (143 mi). We celebrate this feat of engineering with a stamp of the FW 61…