Hanna Reitsch

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Hanna

Hanna Reitsch (29 March 1912 – 24 August 1979) was a German aviator and test pilot. Reitsch was among the very last people to meet Adolf Hitler before his suicide in the Führerbunker in April 1945. Following her capture, she provided information about her departure from Berlin and denied that she might have helped Hitler escape. During the 1930s, Reitsch set more than 40 flight altitude records and women's endurance records in gliding and unpowered flight. In the 1960s, she was sponsored by the West German foreign office as a technical adviser in Ghana and elsewhere. She also founded a gliding school in Ghana, where she worked for Kwame Nkrumah. Another female test pilot was Melitta von Stauffenberg who also flight-tested many of Germany's new aircraft during World War II and received many honors.

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Early life and education Reitsch was born in Hirschberg, Silesia, on 29 March 1912 to an upper-middle-class family. She was daughter of Dr. Wilhelm (Willy) Reitsch, who was an ophthalmology clinic manager, and his wife Emy Helff-Hibler von Alpenheim, who was a member of the Austrian nobility. Despite her mother being a devout Catholic, Hanna was raised a Protestant. She had two siblings, brother Kurt, a naval Fregattenkapitän (frigate captain), and younger sister Heidi. Reitsch began flight training in 1932 at the School of Gliding in Grunau. While a medical student in Berlin, she enrolled in a German Air Mail amateur flying school for powered aircraft at Staaken, training in a Klemm Kl 25.

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1933–1937 In 1933, Reitsch left medical school at the University of Kiel to become, at the invitation of Wolf Hirth, a full-time glider pilot/instructor at Hornberg in Baden-Württemberg. As well as instructional duties, she set an endurance record for women of 11 hours and 20 minutes but this had to be "unofficial" because the observations that were necessary for a record were not fulfilled. Reitsch also contracted with the Ufa Film Company as a stunt pilot for a film called "Rivals of the Air", in which as well as other flying, she had to land in a lake. In January 1934, she joined a South American expedition to study thermal conditions, along with Wolf Hirth, Peter Riedel and Heini Dittmar. While in Argentina, she became the first woman to earn the Silver C Badge, the 25th in the world. In June 1934, Reitsch became a member of the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Segelflug (DFS) and became a test pilot in 1935. Reitsch enrolled in the Civil Airways Training School in Stettin, where she flew a twin-engined aircraft on a cross country flight and aerobatics in a Focke-Wulf Fw 44. In 1937, Ernst Udet gave Reitsch the honorary title of Flugkapitän after…Citește mai mult

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1937–1945 In September 1937, Reitsch was posted to the Luftwaffe testing centre at Rechlin-Lärz Airfield by Ernst Udet. Her flying skill, desire for publicity, and photogenic qualities made her a star of Nazi propaganda. Physically she was petite and very slender, with blonde hair, blue eyes and a "ready smile". She appeared in Nazi propaganda throughout the late 1930s and early 1940s. Reitsch was the first female helicopter pilot and one of the few pilots to fly the Focke-Achgelis Fa 61, the first fully controllable helicopter, for which she received the Military Flying Medal. In 1938, during the three weeks of the International Automobile Exhibition in Berlin, she made daily flights of the Fa 61 helicopter inside the Deutschlandhalle. In September 1938, Reitsch flew the DFS Habicht in the US National Air Races. By the end of the 1930s, Reitsch had set more than 40 flight altitude records and women's endurance records in gliding and unpowered flight. Reitsch was a test pilot on the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber and Dornier Do 17 light/fast bomber projects, for which she received the Iron Cross, Second Class, from Hitler on 28 March 1941. Reitsch was asked to fly many of Germany's…Citește mai mult

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V1 (1944) On 28 February 1944, she presented the idea of Operation Suicide to Hitler at Berchtesgaden, which "would require men who were ready to sacrifice themselves in the conviction that only by this means could their country be saved." Although Hitler "did not consider the war situation sufficiently serious to warrant them ... and ... this was not the right psychological moment", he gave his approval. The project was assigned to Gen. Günther Korten. About 70 volunteers enrolled in the Suicide Group as pilots for the human glider-bomb. By April 1944, Reitsch and Heinz Kensche finished tests of the Me 328, carried aloft by a Dornier Do 217. By then, she was approached by SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Skorzeny, a founding member of the SS- Selbstopferkommando Leonidas (Leonidas Squadron). They adapted the V-1 flying bomb into the Fieseler Fi 103R Reichenberg, including a training single-seater with landing flaps, a training two-seater with no power unit, and an operation single-seater without landing flaps. The plan was never implemented operationally due to other war concerns. In her autobiography, Reitsch recalled that after two initial crashes with the Fi 103R she and Heinz Kensche took over tests of the prototype Fi 103R. She made…Citește mai mult

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Escape from Berlin (1945) In late April 1945, during the Battle of Berlin, Hitler dismissed Hermann Göring as head of the Luftwaffe and appointed Robert Ritter von Greim to replace him. Reitsch had been making military and personal flights between Breslau (Poland), Munich (Germany), and Kitzbühel (Austria) when von Greim instructed her to meet him in Munich, thinking he might need her to pilot a helicopter. Reitsch said goodbye to her family late on 25 April at the Schloss Leopoldskron in Salzburg before driving to Munich. That night, she and von Greim were flown in a Ju 188 from Germany's Neubiberg Air Base to the Rechlin airfield, about 100 km (60 mi) northwest of Berlin. They were then flown to Gatow, Berlin, in a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 (Reitsch riding in the tail by way of an emergency opening), protected against the Soviets by perhaps 40 fighters, including 12 other Fw 190s from Jagdgeschwader 26 under Hauptmann Hans Dortenmann's command. The pair took a Fi 156 Storch, first piloted by von Greim until his foot was struck by a bullet, then by Reitsch reaching over him to land on an improvised airstrip in the Tiergarten near the Brandenburg Gate. The pair…Citește mai mult

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1947–1979 After her release, Reitsch settled in Frankfurt am Main. After the war, German citizens were barred from flying powered aircraft, but within a few years gliding was allowed, which she took up again. In 1952, Reitsch won a bronze medal in the World Gliding Championships in Spain; she was the first woman to compete and in 1955 she became German champion. She continued to break records, including the women's altitude record (6,848 m or 22,467 ft) in 1957 and her first diamond of the Gold-C badge. During the mid-1950s, Reitsch was interviewed on film and talked about her wartime flight tests of the Fa 61, Me 262 and Me 163. In 1959, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru invited Reitsch, who spoke fluent English, to start a gliding centre; she flew with him over New Delhi. In 1961, she accepted U.S. President John F. Kennedy's invitation to the White House. From 1962 to 1966, she lived in Ghana. The then Ghanaian President, Kwame Nkrumah invited Reitsch to Ghana after reading of her work in India. At Afienya she founded the first indigenous African national gliding school, working closely with the government and the armed forces. The West German government supported…Citește mai mult

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Last interview (1970s) Reitsch was interviewed and photographed several times in the 1970s, towards the end of her life, by Jewish-American photojournalist Ron Laytner. In her closing remarks she is quoted as saying: And what have we now in Germany? A country 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 of 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. In the same interview, she is quoted as saying, I asked Hermann Göring one day, "What is this I am hearing that Germany is killing Jews?" Göring responded angrily, "A totally outrageous lie made up by the British and American press. It will be used as a rope to hang us someday if we lose the war."

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Death Reitsch died of a heart attack in Frankfurt at the age of 67, on 24 August 1979. She had never married. She is buried in the Reitsch family grave in the Salzburger Kommunalfriedhof. Former British pilot Eric Brown said he received a letter from Reitsch in early August 1979 in which she said, "It began in the bunker, there it shall end." Within weeks she was dead. Brown speculated that Reitsch had taken the cyanide capsule Hitler had given her in the bunker and that she had taken it as part of a suicide pact with Greim. There is no record of a postmortem.

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List of awards and world records 1932: women's gliding endurance record (5.5 hours) 1936: women's gliding distance record (305 km (190 mi)) 1937: first woman to cross the Alps in a glider 1937: the first woman in the world to be promoted to flight captain by Colonel Ernst Udet 1937: the first woman to fly a helicopter (Fa 61) 1937: world distance record in a helicopter (109 km (68 mi)) 1938: the first person to fly a helicopter (Fa 61) inside an enclosed space (Deutschlandhalle) 1938: winner of German national gliding competition Sylt-Breslau Silesia 1939: women's world record in gliding for point-to-point flight. 1943: While in the Luftwaffe, the first woman to pilot a rocket plane (Messerschmitt Me 163). She survived a disastrous crash though with severe injuries and because of this she became the first of three German women to receive the Iron Cross First Class. 1944: the first woman in the world to pilot a jet aircraft at the Luftwaffe research centre at Rechlin during the trials of the Messerschmitt Me 262 and Heinkel He 162 1952: third place in the World Gliding Championships in Spain together with her team-mate Lisbeth Häfner

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1955: German gliding champion 1956: German gliding distance record (370 km (230 mi)) 1957: German gliding altitude record (6,848 m (22,467 ft))

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Books by Hanna Reitsch Fliegen, mein Leben. 4th ed. Munich: Herbig, 2001 [1951]. ISBN 3-7766-2197-4 (Autobiography) Ich flog in Afrika für Nkrumahs Ghana. 2nd ed. Munich: Herbig, 1979. ISBN 3-7766-0929-X (original title: Ich flog für Kwame Nkrumah). Das Unzerstörbare in meinem Leben. 7th ed. Munich: Herbig, 1992. ISBN 3-7766-0975-3. Höhen und Tiefen. 1945 bis zur Gegenwart. Munich: Heyne, 1984. ISBN 3-453-01963-6. Höhen und Tiefen. 1945 bis zur Gegenwart. 2nd expanded ed. Munich/Berlin: Herbig, 1978. ISBN 3-7766-0890-0.

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In popular culture Reitsch is one of the two female test pilots (alongside Melitta von Stauffenberg) featured in The Woman Who Flew for Hitler (Pan Macmillan, 2017) by Clare Mulley Reitsch has been portrayed by the following actresses in film and television productions: Barbara Rütting in the 1965 film Operation Crossbow Diane Cilento in the 1973 British film Hitler: The Last Ten Days. Myvanwy Jenn in the 1973 British television production The Death of Adolf Hitler. Anna Thalbach in the 2004 German film Downfall (German: Der Untergang).

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Bibliography Allman, Jean (February 2013). "Phantoms of the Archive: Kwame Nkrumah, a Nazi Pilot named Hanna, and the Contingencies of Postcolonial History-Writing". American Historical Review. 118 (1): 104–129. doi:10.1093/ahr/118.1.104. Beevor, Antony (2002). Berlin: The Downfall 1945. Viking-Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-670-03041-5. Brown, Eric (2006). Wings on my Sleeve. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-297-84565-2. Caldwell, Donald L. (1991). JG 26: Top Guns of the Luftwaffe. New York: Ivy Books. ISBN 978-0-8041-1050-1. Cook, Joan (31 August 1979). "Hanna Reitsch, 67. A Top German Pilot". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 July 2008. Dollinger, Hans; Jacobsen, Hans Adolf (1968). The Decline and Fall of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan: A Pictorial History of the Final Days of World War II. Translated by Pomerans, Arnold. New York: Crown. OCLC 712594. Hirsch, Afua (16 April 2012). "Hitler's pilot helped Ghana's women to fly". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 April 2012. Mulley, Clare (18 July 2017). The Women Who Flew for Hitler: A True Story of Soaring Ambition and Searing Rivalry. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-1-250-13316-8. O'Donnell, James P. (1978). The Bunker. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-395-25719-7. Piszkiewicz, Dennis (1997). From Nazi Test Pilot to Hitler's Bunker: The Fantastic Flights of Hanna Reitsch. Praeger Publishers. ISBN 978-0-275-95456-7. Archived…Citește mai mult