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 . From birth to the 1918 armistice . Fieseler was born in Glesch . He joined the Air Service of the German Army in 1915 . Despite a crash during training hospitalizing him until February 1916 , he was assigned as an observation pilot by October 1916 , flying first with FAA 243 , then with FAA 41 . In 1917 , he qualified as a fighter pilot and was posted on 12 July to the Macedonian front , initially flying a Roland D . II with Jasta 25 . Fieseler scored his first aerial victory on 20 August 1917 . A serious illness removed him from active duty from 21 September until 5 November 1917 . Festner would not score his second success until 30 January 1918 . He was eventually credited with nineteen confirmed aerial victories , with three others unconfirmed . Commissioned in October 1918 , he was the highest scoring German ace to survive on the eastern Front . He was awarded the Golden Military Merit Cross and the Iron Cross , first and second class . Between the World Wars . 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 built 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 " . World War II . " Gerhard Fieseler Werke " produced aircraft for the German military thorughout World War II . Post World War II . 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 . The aerobatic manoeuvre Fieseler is named after him .