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'Hanna Reitsch' (March 29, 1912 – August 24, 1979) was a famous German test pilot.

Contents

Early life

Nazi career

After the war

References

External links

Early life

Reitsch was born in Hirschberg, Silesia. She was the daughter of an ophthalmologist and was in training to become a medical doctor in 1932 when she left that field to pursue a career as a test pilot. In the 1930s she became famous, setting many glider, aerobatic and endurance records, being the first woman to cross the Alps in a glider. Several of her gliding records stand to this day.

Nazi career

In 1937, Reitsch was posted to the Luftwaffe testing center at Rechlin by Ernst Udet. While under direct command of Karl Franke she soon became a major test pilot on the Junkers Ju 87 ''Stuka'' and Dornier Do 17 projects, as well as one of the few to fly the new Focke-Achgelis Fa 61, the world's first fully controllable helicopter. Her flying and her photogenic qualities made her a star of the Nazi party, always looking for publicity, and in 1938 she flew the Fa 61 every night inside the "Deutschlandhalle" at the Berlin Motor Show.
As the war progressed, Reitsch was invited to fly many of Germany's latest (and increasingly desperate) designs, including the rocket-propelled Messerschmitt Me 163 ''Komet'', and several larger bombers on which she tested various mechanisms for cutting barrage balloon cables. After crashing on her fifth Me 163 flight, she was badly injured but insisted on writing her report before falling unconscious and spending five months in hospital. Eventually she became Adolf Hitler's favourite pilot. Reitsch was one of only two women awarded the Iron Cross First Class during World War II, and the only woman awarded the Luftwaffe Combined Pilot and Observer Badge with Diamonds. She survived many accidents and was badly injured several times.
A myth entered public consciousness from the George Peppard film "Operation Crossbow" that early guidance and stabilization problems of the V-1 Flying Bomb were finally resolved by a daring test flight by Reitsch in a V-1 modified for manned operation. In fact, in her Autobiogrphy "Fliegen, Meine Liebe" she details that her first flights late in the war in the manned version of the V1, known as the Reichenberg, were to determine the reasons its testpilots had been unable to successfully land it and had been killed or gravely injured. The main reason was the craft's extremely high stall speed and the previous test pilots' inexperience in landing at extremely high speed. Her previous experience with the very fast Me163 and some simulated landings at a safe high altitude had given her the wherewithall to only land the Reichenberg at speeds over 200 km/h.
In the last days of the war, Reitsch was asked to fly her companion, Colonel-General Robert Ritter von Greim, into Berlin to meet with Hitler, who promoted von Greim to Goering's position over the defunct Luftwaffe. The city was already surrounded by Red Army troops who had made significant progress into the downtown area when Reitsch and von Greim arrived on April 26, landing near the Brandenburg Gate and then made their way to the Führerbunker (Greim was wounded in the leg during the landing). The aircraft she used was a Fieseler Fi 156 ''Storch'', already well known for its use during the escape of Mussolini. She reportedly overheard Hitler laying out plans for Nazi commanders to join together in mass suicide when it became obvious that the war was over. She also hoped to fly out propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels' six children, who had been staying in the bunker since April 22 with their parents, but neither Joseph nor Magda Goebbels would allow it. She escaped Berlin on 29 April by flying out through heavy Soviet anti-aircraft fire with von Greim possessing Hitler's last will and testament and other important Third Reich legal papers.
Reitsch was a devoted and idealistic Nazi, who adored Adolf Hitler and refused to believe the reports of concentration camps and torture. She was captured along with her last charge (and intimate companion) von Greim. The two were interviewed together by their American captors and when asked about being ordered to leave the Fuhrerbunker on April 28th, 1945, Reitsch and von Greim kept repeating the same answer, "It was the blackest day when we could not die at our Fuhrer's side." In tears she added, "We should all kneel down in reverence and prayer before the altar of the Fatherland." She was completely taken aback by the interviewers' follow-up question which was to inquire as to what the "Altar of the Fatherland" was, and responded, "Why, the Fuhrer's bunker in Berlin . . . " ^[1]
She was held for eighteen months by the American military after the war, during which time she was interrogated and then released. Her parents died during expulsion from their hometown Hirschberg by the Polish during the last days of the war.

After the war

Reitsch found a new home in Frankfurt am Main.
After the war, German citizens were forbidden from flying. A few years later, gliding was permitted. In 1952, Reitsch, the only woman to compete, won third place in the World Gliding Championships in Spain. She continued to break records including the women's altitude record (6,848 metres) and became German champion in 1955.
It was shortly after this that Reitsch was interviewed on film, and there she discussed her memoirs of wartime flight testing. Some excerpts of these films have been re-broadcast on various television shows. They remain the authoritative guides to piloting and flight performance of the Fa 61, Me 262 and Me 163.
In 1959, Reitsch was invited to India by the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in order to establish a gliding centre. In 1961, she was invited by US President John F. Kennedy to the White House.
At the request of its president, Kwame Nkrumah, Reitsch lived in Ghana from 1962 to 1966, where she founded under the command of the Ghanaian Air Chief of Staff Air commodore JES de Graft-Hayford the first Black African national gliding school.
In the 1970s, she returned to break many gliding records in several categories, including the Women's Out and Return World Record twice, once in 1976 (715 km), and again in 1979 (802 km) flown on the Appalachian Ridges in the United States. During this period Reitsch said she had been "disgusted" by what she witnessed in the Third Reich.
Reitsch was interviewed and photographed several times in the early 1970s in Germany by American investigative photo journalist Ron Laytner. At the end of her last interview, perhaps sensing that the end was near and that she wouldn't have to deal with the fallout of her statements for much longer, Reitsch told Laytner:

And what have we now in Germany? A land of bankers and car-makers. Even our great army has gone soft. Soldiers wear beards and question orders. I am not ashamed to say I believed in National Socialism. I still wear the Iron Cross with diamonds Hitler gave me. But today in all Germany you can’t find a single person who voted Adolf Hitler into power. Many Germans feel guilty about the war. But they don't explain the real guilt we share – that we lost.^[2]

In 1979, aged 67, Reitsch died in Frankfurt from a heart attack.

References

1. [Page 234, "The Decline and Fall of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan", Hans Dollinger, Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 67-27047]
2. Hanna Reitsch: A German WWII test pilot who has been called "The Century’s Greatest Pilot", on the website of Greyfalcon.us ( Grey Falcon )

External links

★ Female Pilot Pitches Suicide Squad to Hitler (February 28, 1944)

★ Hanna Reitsch