Inspiration II: twice around the world
The year 1932 was a special one for aviation. Only two months after Amelia Earhart's solo flight across the Atlantic, exactly 90 years ago, on 8 July 1932, Elly Beinhorn (1907-2007) was on the last of a total of 32,000 km of her round-the-world flight in an easterly direction, which she had begun the previous December. Her landing in Berlin on 26 July 1932 made her the first woman to circumnavigate the globe by air.
Four days earlier, her compatriot Wolfgang Gronau (1893-1977) had set off in a Dornier-Wal seaplane on a round-the-world flight in a westerly direction, which brought him and his team of three - all men - back to their starting point on the island of Sylt in the North Sea in November of the same year after 44,000 km in the air. (ah)