On June 26, 1936, at Bremen Airport, test pilot Ewald Rohlfs lifted the Focke-Wulf Fw 61 into hover. It was not the first machine to leave the ground vertically, but it was the first to do so with complete control in all axes—roll, pitch, and yaw—and to sustain that control for meaningful flight. The Fw 61, registered D-EBVU, was the brainchild of Henrich Focke, who had spent years studying autogyros before deciding that true rotary-wing flight required a side-by-side twin-rotor system. Using the fuselage and 160-horsepower Siemens-Halske radial engine of a Focke-Wulf Stieglitz training biplane, Focke replaced the wings with two three-bladed rotors mounted on tubular-steel outriggers. The first free flight lasted less than a minute, but the potential was immediate. By early 1937 the second prototype was flying, and on May 10, 1937, Rohlfs accomplished the first engine-off autorotation landing. The Fw 61 shattered every existing helicopter record: by June 1938 it had reached an altitude of 3,427 meters (11,243 feet) and flown 230 km (143 miles) in a straight line. In February 1938, the legendary Hanna Reitsch flew the machine indoors at Berlin’s Deutschlandhalle stadium before crowds of thousands, hovering and pirouetting with a precision no earlier rotorcraft could match. The Fw 61 did not merely rise; it answered to the pilot’s touch, and in doing so it inaugurated the age of the practical helicopter.