Hanna
Reitsch
(1912 - 1979)
WHILE THE "Right Stuff" men were still sitting behind
conventional engines and looking through the arcs of their propellers, a
pilot in Germany was routinely setting records in exotic jet- and
rocket-powered aircraft and helping draft the first blueprints for a
trip to Mars.
While the Allied air forces were pounding Germany's industrial
infrastructure to dust during World War II, Germany turned in
desperation to its best test pilot--arguably the most professional and
courageous who ever lived--to push aviation technology far beyond
anything the Allies ever dreamed of in a last-ditch effort to defeat
them.
When a powerful Russian army was only scant yards from Hitler's bunker,
a pilot in Germany landed a bullet-riddled plane (with a freshly wounded
comrade writhing in the cockpit) on a shell-cratered Berlin street in a
futile effort to rescue Hitler from the deadly trap. Shortly after, the
pilot successfully took off from the same street through a hailstorm of
Russian gunfire, again swerving around the shell craters.
Long after the war, when most would be in retirement, this pilot took
off from a field near State College, Pa., to try out a glider that
belonged to a friend. When the glider landed--after flying almost 600
miles without power--yet another stun-ning record had been added to
aviation history.
These are but a few of the incredible exploits of Hanna Reitsch.
The ascent of Reitsch's career and WWII German aviation, both began,
remarkably enough, with the restrictions imposed against the German air
force by the Treaty of Versailles. Few powered planes were permitted in
Germany after World War I. A loophole in the restrictions allowed
Germany to form dozens of glider clubs that attracted thousands of
fresh-faced, eager young pilots. The clever German militarists were
developing a large cadre of skilled pilots who would one day trade their
harmless little gliders for much more formidable craft marked with the
distinct "Balkenkreuzen" of the Luftwaffe.
In 1932, 20-year-old medical student Hanna Reitsch joined a glider club.
Soon, she set the first of at least 40 aviation records credited to her
and was one of the first glider pilots to cross the Alps.
Like many of her fellow glider pilots, Reitsch graduated to powered
aircraft when an emboldened Germany began rebuilding its air force in
earnest.
Hanna Reitsch and the Ho III a
Reitsch's talents were soon harnessed to help hone
the edge of the Luftwaffe, and she took on unimaginably dangerous jobs.
One type of plane she tested was a heavy bomber that had steel blades
installed on the leading edges of the wings to cut the heavy steel
cables used to tether barrage balloons. During one demonstration for
Luftwaffe brass of this hair-brained scheme, Reitsch made a graceful
landing and exited the cockpit smiling and waving after deliberately
flying into the cables. Only she knew that the wing had almost been
ripped from the plane when she hit a cable and she had to fight for her
life--second by unnerving second--to get the crippled plane on the
runway.
On another hair-raising flight in a stricken plane, instead of bailing
out, Reitsch calmly recorded flight data with paper and pencil because
she did not think she would live long enough to make the report in
person.
Many of the designs that Reitsch tested were novel and innovative, and
some were just simply ill-conceived deathtraps. Reitsch was the only
civilian and only woman to receive the Knight's Cross with Diamonds. Had
Reitsch never lived, a hypothetical screenplay of her adventures would
probably be dismissed as being "too far-fetched to be believable."
Hanna Reitsch demonstrating a prototype helicopter
The first operational jet fighter, the twin-engine
Me-262 "Swallow," was one of Reitsch's more routine rides. She also
tested a cockpit-equipped V-1 rocket and the insanely dangerous
rocket-powered Me-163 Komet. The Komet was powered by a binary fuel
that--when mixed together--exploded to provide thrust. Sometimes the
plane exploded, too, and, if that were not bad enough, the fuel provided
only five minutes of flight time, and the pilot had to glide home to a
landing. A second landing attempt was not an option.
One of the fuel components dissolves flesh, and sometimes there was
nothing to bury following a Komet fuel leak. The payoff was an aircraft
that could scream through an Allied bomber formation decimating it with
the impunity of a shark attacking a school of baby squid. The Komet is
the direct ancestor of many of today's most advanced delta-wing
warplanes.
The tragedy of Reitsch's remarkable life was that she chose to serve the
Nazis. When in State College, Pa., Reitsch proudly showed the owner of
the glider she flew a cyanide suicide capsule that was handed to her by
Hitler shortly before he killed himself in his dank bunker. Some
historians, blinded by her accomplishments, have tried to depict her as
a naïve, apolitical technician, but the fact that her parents committed
suicide rather than face life in a defeated Germany did not seem to faze
her.
Reitsch was a microcosm of a wartime Germany that was blessed with great
scientists and engineers like her colleague, rocket scientist Werner von
Braun. If the German fascists proved anything, it is that technological
advancement can proceed apace without parallel development in
humanitarian principles. It is very sad that Reitsch's remarkable
accomplishments will be forever tainted by the twisted cross that
adorned the aircraft that she flew so bravely.
In the very last days of
The Third Reich, she landed an aircraft on a shell-pocked street in
Berlin when most of the city had already been occupied by the Russians.
She spent two days in the "Fuhrerbunker" before returning to her
aircraft and taking off under a hail of heavy gunfire. Although her
politics were not popular in post war Europe, to say the least, she did
not hesitate to break the "glass ceiling" of women's aviation. In fact,
she smashed through it in the fastest and most advanced aircraft of her
day. Allied airmen were lucky that she was too valuable as a test pilot
to be risked on but a few combat missions
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