Squadron Leader Robert Kronfeld, AFC (5 May 1904 – 12 February 1948) was an Austrian-born gliding champion and sailplane designer of the 1920s and 30s.

[7] He befriended Walter Georgii, who was a meteorologist working at the nearby Darmstadt University of Technology and who had recently discovered thermals.

In 1926, the German newspaper Grüne Post offered a RM 5,000 prize for the first glider pilot to fly 100 km (62 mi).

Kronfeld took up the challenge in 1929 and selected a long chain of hills, the Teutoburger Wald, as a promising site for the record attempt.

Kronfeld used the prize money to build a gigantic sailplane, named Austria,[3] which had a wingspan of 30 metres - a record not to be matched until the end of the twentieth century.

[12][13] On 20 June 1931 Kronfeld was the first pilot to fly a glider across the English Channel, making a return flight the same day.

[23] Under tow from an Avro Cadet piloted by Mark Lacayo, they departed Kirby Moorside, Yorkshire, proceeding westwards via Blackpool the original planned point in order to make the crossing to Ronaldsway Airport, Isle of Man.

[23] The wind was causing significant problems in addition to lowering cloud and had blown the aircraft and glider 30 nautical miles off course.

The weather resulted in the aircraft and glider descending to only 50 feet above the sea and a further problem was being caused by reducing visibility and the approaching darkness.

[14] Robert Kronfeld was commemorated in an exhibition in the National Scout Center of the Österreichischer Pfadfinderbund in Vienna in September 2010 and stamp and special cachet were issued.

The sole surviving Kronfeld Drone de Luxe, G-AEKV, built in 1936, is preserved at Brooklands Museum, Surrey, UK.

In the years following Kronfeld's death his widow, Margaret, approached L Wingfield MC DFC, to create a lasting memorial, to which the Oxford Gliding Club, was reformed, flying at Kidlington Airport in 1951.