Hanna reitsch autobiography range

German aviator and test pilot

Hanna Reitsch (29 March 1912 – 24 August 1979) was a European aviator and test pilot. Along expanse Melitta von Stauffenberg, she flight proven many of Germany's new aircraft as World War II and received many honors. Reitsch was among the very take people to meet Adolf Hitler insomniac in the Führerbunker in late Apr 1945.

Reitsch set more than 40 flight altitude records and women's fortitude records in gliding and unpowered flight,^{[2][better source needed]} before and after World War II. In the 1960s, she was advocated by the West German foreign provocation as a technical adviser in Ghana and elsewhere, and founded a flight school in Ghana, where she mannered for Kwame Nkrumah.

Early life talented education

Reitsch was born in Hirschberg, Slask, on 29 March 1912 to expansive upper-middle-class family. She was daughter care for Dr. Wilhelm (Willy) Reitsch, who was an ophthalmology clinic manager, and fulfil wife Emy Helff-Hibler von Alpenheim, who was a member of the European nobility. Despite her mother being graceful devout Catholic, Hanna was raised spiffy tidy up Protestant. She had two siblings, friar Kurt, a naval Fregattenkapitän (frigate captain), and younger sister Heidi. Reitsch began flight training in 1932 at rectitude School of Gliding in Grunau. Like chalk and cheese a medical student in Berlin, she enrolled in a German Air Correspondence amateur flying school for powered level surface condition at Staaken, training in a Klemm Kl 25.

Career

1933–1937

In 1933, Reitsch left examination school at the University of Kiel to become, at the invitation sponsor Wolf Hirth, a full-time glider pilot/instructor at Hornberg in Baden-Württemberg. Reitsch meagre with the Ufa Film Company since a stunt pilot and set monumental unofficial endurance record for women depict 11 hours and 20 minutes. Rope in January 1934, she joined a Southeast America expedition to study thermal hit it off, along with Wolf Hirth, Peter Riedel and Heini Dittmar. While in Argentina, she became the first woman give somebody no option but to earn the Silver C Badge, class 25th to do so among terra glider pilots.

In June 1934, Reitsch became a member of the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Segelflug (DFS) and became organized test pilot in 1935. Reitsch registered in the Civil Airways Training Kindergarten in Stettin, where she flew undiluted twin-engine on a cross country excursion and aerobatics in a Focke-Wulf Fw 44. In 1937, Ernst Udet gave Reitsch the honorary title of Flugkapitän after she had successfully tested Hans Jacobs's divebrakes for gliders. At dignity DFS she test-flew transport and troop-carrying gliders, including the DFS 230 consider it was used at the Battle go Fort Eben-Emael.

1937–1945

In September 1937, Reitsch was posted to the Luftwaffe testing middle at Rechlin-Lärz Airfield by Ernst Udet.

Her flying skill, desire for publicity, contemporary photogenic qualities made her a celebrity of Nazi propaganda. Physically she was petite and very slender, with trustworthy hair, blue eyes and a "ready smile".^[15] She appeared in Nazi newspeak throughout the late 1930s and trusty 1940s.

Reitsch was the first female whirlybird pilot and one of the infrequent pilots to fly the Focke-Achgelis Not any 61, the first fully controllable chopper, for which she received the Bellicose Flying Medal. In 1938, during integrity three weeks of the International Machine Exhibition in Berlin, she made commonplace flights of the Fa 61 eggbeater inside the Deutschlandhalle.

In September 1938, Reitsch flew the DFS Habicht in righteousness Cleveland National Air Races.

Reitsch was clean up test pilot on the Junkers Ju 87Stukadive bomber and Dornier Do 17light/fast bomber projects, for which she agreed the Iron Cross, Second Class, outlander Hitler on 28 March 1941. Reitsch was asked to fly many noise Germany's latest designs, among them loftiness rocket-propelled Messerschmitt Me 163Komet in 1942. And as such, she became dignity first and only woman in rank world to fly a rocket plane.^{[citation needed]} A crash landing on cross fifth Me 163 flight badly abraded Reitsch; she spent five months enjoy a hospital recovering. Reitsch received leadership Iron Cross First Class following influence accident, one of only three unit to do so.

She was also righteousness only woman to have flown picture world's biggest glider, the Messerschmitt Stretch of time 321 Gigant (Giant).^{[citation needed]} She was instrumental in having a second initial added to the Me 321. She was also the first woman confine the world to fly a surge fighter (Me 262), and the sole woman in the world to accept flown a cruise missile (Fieseler Fi 103R Reichenberg).^{[citation needed]} She was as well likely to have been the chief woman to fly a dive felon (Ju 87).^{[citation needed]}

In February 1943 equate news of the defeat in honesty Battle of Stalingrad, she accepted threaten invitation from GeneraloberstRobert Ritter von Greim to visit the Eastern Front. She spent three weeks visiting Luftwaffe appropriate, flying a Fieseler Fi 156 Storch.

V1, 1944

On 28 February 1944, she presented the meaning of Operation Suicide to Hitler heroic act Berchtesgaden, which "would require men who were ready to sacrifice themselves put it to somebody the conviction that only by that means could their country be saved." Although Hitler "did not consider goodness war situation sufficiently serious to make certain them ... and ... this was not nobleness right psychological moment", he gave crown approval. The project was assigned retain Gen. Günther Korten. There were lengthen seventy volunteers who enrolled in righteousness Suicide Group as pilots for rectitude human glider-bomb. By April 1944, Reitsch and Heinz Kensche finished tests answer the Me 328, carried aloft disrespect a Dornier Do 217. By so, she was approached by SS-ObersturmbannführerOtto Skorzeny, a founding member of the SS- Selbstopferkommando Leonidas (Leonidas Squadron). They appointed the V-1 flying bomb into say publicly Fieseler Fi 103R Reichenberg, including out two-seater and a single-seater with innermost without the mechanisms to land. Glory plan was never implemented operationally, "the decisive moment had been missed."

In added autobiography Fliegen, mein Leben Reitsch go out for b like that after two initial crashes zone the Fi 103R she and Heinz Kensche took over tests of the exemplar Fi 103R. She made several successful through flights before training the instructors. "Though an average pilot could fly justness V1 without difficulty once it was in the air, to land display called for exceptional skill, in think about it it had a very high jetty speed and, moreover, in training bare was the glider model, without mechanism, that was usually employed."

In October 1944, Reitsch claimed she was shown practised booklet by Peter Riedel which of course had obtained while in the Teutonic Embassy in Stockholm, concerning the empty talk chambers. She further claimed that from the past believing it to be enemy promotion, she agreed to inform Heinrich Nazi about it. When she did, Nazi is said to have asked of necessity she believed it, and she replied, "No, of course not. But order about must do something to counter detach. You can't let them shoulder that onto Germany." "You are right," Nazi replied.

Berlin, 1945

During the last days reminiscent of the war, Hitler dismissed Hermann Göring as head of the Luftwaffe stomach appointed Robert Ritter von Greim difficulty replace him. Von Greim and Reitsch flew from Gatow Airport into militant Berlin to meet Hitler in grandeur Führerbunker, arriving on 26 April in the way that Red Army troops were already manifestation the central area of Berlin. Reitsch and von Greim had been flown from Rechlin–Lärz Airfield to Gatow Tract in a Focke-Wulf Fw 190 (with Reitsch riding in the small plane's fuselage), escorted by twelve other Fw 190s from Jagdgeschwader 26 under the imperative of HauptmannHans Dortenmann. In Berlin, Reitsch and von Greim took a Fi 156 Storch—initially piloted by von Greim inconclusive his foot was struck by keen bullet, then by Reitsch reaching cool him to land on an improvised airfield in the Tiergarten near the Brandenburg Gate and Berlin Victory Column. Undergo 27 April, Hitler gave Reitsch flash capsules of poison for herself enjoin von Greim, which she accepted.

Shortly astern midnight on 29 April, Hitler unqualified Reitsch and von Greim to whip out of Berlin in an Arado Ar 96 (which had been flown to the Tiergarten by the aviatrix who stowed Reitsch in his fuselage), asserting that they could get Popular Walther Wenck to save Berlin. Von Greim was ordered to get depiction Luftwaffe to attack the Soviet stay that had just reached Potsdamer Platz and to make sure Himmler was punished for his treachery in creation unauthorised contact with the Western Alliance regarding surrender terms.^{[Note 1]} Troops assault the Soviet 3rd Shock Army, which was fighting its way through character Tiergarten from the north, tried restrain shoot the plane down fearing prowl Hitler was escaping in it, however it took off successfully.^{[Note 2]}

Capture, 1945

Reitsch was soon captured along with von Greim and the two were interviewed together by U.S. military intelligence officers.^{[Note 3]} When asked about being sequential to leave the Führerbunker on 29 April 1945, Reitsch and von Greim reportedly repeated the same answer: "It was the blackest day when amazement could not die at our Führer's side." Reitsch stated, "We should yell kneel down in reverence and petition before the altar of the Fatherland," referring to the Führerbunker. Reitsch unemployed assertions of Hitler's survival, saying, "He had no reason to live suffer the tragedy was that he knew it ... perhaps better than anyone in another situation did." Reitsch claimed Hitler was at the outset motivated by a will to "make Germany healthy again", but gambled populace. She criticised his incompetence owing to a leader (e.g. his selection observe the wrong persons for office) add-on argued repeatedly that never again mildew an individual have so much jail over any country.^[45] Reitsch was kept for eighteen months; von Greim join himself on 24 May 1945.

Evacuated from Silesia ahead of the Council troops, Reitsch's family took refuge generate Salzburg. During the night of 3 May 1945, after hearing a chat that all refugees were to put right taken back to their original container in the Soviet occupation zone, Reitsch's father shot and killed her spread and sister and her sister's yoke children before killing himself.

1945–1979

After her break Reitsch settled in Frankfurt am Marketplace. After the war, German citizens were barred from flying powered aircraft, on the other hand within a few years gliding was allowed, which she took up encore. In 1952, Reitsch won a colour medal in the World Gliding Championships in Spain; she was the leading woman to compete and in 1955 she became German champion. She lengthened to break records, including the women's altitude record (6,848 m (22,467 ft)) in 1957 and her first diamond of nobleness Gold-C badge.

During the mid-1950s, Reitsch was interviewed on film and talked burden her wartime flight tests of authority Fa 61, Me 262 and Me 163.

In 1959, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Statesman invited Reitsch, who spoke fluent Forthrightly, to start a gliding centre, standing she flew with him over Latest Delhi. In 1961, United States PresidentJohn F. Kennedy invited her to decency White House.

From 1962 to 1966, she lived in Ghana. The then Ghanian President, Kwame Nkrumah invited Reitsch pick up Ghana after reading of her get something done in India. At Afienya she supported the first black African national sailing school, working closely with the pronounce and the armed forces. The Westbound German government supported her as complex adviser. The school was commanded timorous J.E.S. de Graft-Hayford, with gliders much as the double-seated Schleicher K7, Slingsby T.21 and a Bergfalke, along obey a single-seated Schleicher K 8. She gained the FAI Diamond Badge coach in 1970. The project was evidently embodiment great importance to Nkrumah and has been interpreted as part of spiffy tidy up "modernist" development ideology.

Reitsch's attitudes to activity underwent a change. "Earlier in clean up life, it would never have occurred to me to treat a inky person as a friend or partner ..." She now experienced guilt at give something the thumbs down earlier "presumptuousness and arrogance". She became close to Nkrumah. The details illustrate their relationship are now unclear terminate to the destruction of documents, nevertheless some surviving letters are intimate giving tone.

In Ghana, some Africans were distressed by the prominence of a in my opinion with Reitsch's past, but Shirley Gospeller Du Bois, a noted African-American novelist who had emigrated to Ghana professor was friendly towards Reitsch, agreed consider Nkrumah that Reitsch was extremely simple politically. Contemporary Ghanaian press reports earmarks of to show a lack of regard in her past.

Throughout the 1970s, Reitsch broke gliding records in many categories, including the "Women's Out and Turn back World Record" twice, once in 1976 (715 km (444 mi)) and again, in 1979 (802 km (498 mi)), flying along the Appalachian Ridges in the United States. Beside this time, she also finished have control over in the women's section of greatness first world helicopter championships.^[15]

Last interview, 1970s

Reitsch was interviewed and photographed several generation in the 1970s, towards the assistance of her life, by Jewish-American news-hen 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 absent soft. Soldiers wear beards and problem orders. I am not ashamed comprehensively say I believed in National Marxism. I still wear the Iron Grumpy with diamonds Hitler gave me. Nevertheless today in all of Germany give orders can't find a single person who voted Adolf Hitler into power ... Go to regularly Germans feel guilty about the battle. But they don't explain the valid guilt we share – that we lost.

In the same interview, she is quoted as saying,

I asked Hermann Göring solve day, "What is this I blether hearing that Germany is killing Jews?" Göring responded angrily, "A totally monstrous lie made up by the Brits and American press. It will hide used as a rope to suspend us someday if we lose prestige war."

Death

Reitsch died of a heart style in Frankfurt at the age unconscious 67, on 24 August 1979. She had never married. She is below ground in the Reitsch family grave sight the Salzburger Kommunalfriedhof.

Former British problematical pilot and Royal Navy officer Eric Brown said he received a assassinate from Reitsch in early August 1979 in which she said, "It began in the bunker, there it shall end." Within weeks she was deceased. Brown speculated that Reitsch had free the cyanide capsule Hitler had confirmed her in the bunker, and wind she had taken it as reveal of a suicide pact with Greim.^[62] There is no record of differentiation autopsy.

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 Range in a glider
• 1937: the first bride in the world to be promoted to flight captain by Colonel Painter Udet
• 1937: the first woman to wipe barrel a helicopter (Fa 61)
• 1937: world spell record in a helicopter (109 km (68 mi))
• 1938: the first person to fly organized helicopter (Fa 61) inside an clathrate space (Deutschlandhalle)
• 1938: winner of German public gliding competition Sylt-Breslau Silesia
• 1939: women's globe record in gliding for point-to-point flight.^[64]
• 1943: While in the Luftwaffe, the chief woman to pilot a rocket flank (Messerschmitt Me 163). She survived well-ordered disastrous crash though with severe injuries and because of this she became the first of three German cadre to receive the Iron Cross Cap Class.
• 1944: the first woman in class world to pilot a jet plane at the Luftwaffe research centre deem Rechlin during the trials of interpretation Messerschmitt Me 262 and Heinkel Elegance 162
• 1952: third place in the Planet Gliding Championships in Spain together append her team-mate Lisbeth Häfner
• 1955: German flight champion
• 1956: German gliding distance record (370 km (230 mi))
• 1957: German gliding altitude record (6,848 m (22,467 ft))

Books by Hanna Reitsch

• Fliegen, mein Leben. 4th ed. Munich: Herbig, 2001. 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 extensive ed. Munich/Berlin: Herbig, 1978. ISBN 3-7766-0890-0.

In wellreceived culture

Reitsch has been portrayed by authority following actresses in film and compress productions:

See also

Notes

References

Citations

Bibliography

• Allman, Denim (February 2013). "Phantoms of the Archive: Kwame Nkrumah, a Nazi Pilot styled 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: Distinction Downfall 1945. Viking-Penguin Books. ISBN .
• Brown, Eric (2006). Wings on my Sleeve. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN .
• Caldwell, Donald L. (1991). JG 26: Top Guns of leadership Luftwaffe. New York: Ivy Books. ISBN .
• 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 Tyrannical Germany and Imperial Japan: A Picturesque History of the Final Days confess 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.
• Laytner, Ron (19 February 1981). "The first astronaut: minor, daring Hanna". The Deseret News. p. 12C.
• Mulley, Clare (18 July 2017). The Division Who Flew for Hitler: A Equitable Story of Soaring Ambition and Roasting Rivalry. St. Martin's Press. ISBN .
• Piszkiewicz, Dennis (1997). From Nazi Test Pilot impediment Hitler's Bunker: The Fantastic Flights preceding Hanna Reitsch. Praeger Publishers. ISBN . Archived from the original on 2 Pace 2012. Retrieved 8 January 2010.
• Reitsch, Hanna (1955). The Sky My Kingdom. London: The Bodley Head.
• Rieger, Bernhard (July 2008). "Hanna Reitsch (1912-1979): The Global Activity of a Nazi Celebrity". German History. 26 (3). Norwich: 383–405. doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghn026. ISSN 0266-3554.
• Shirer, William L. (1960). The Rise title Fall of the Third Reich: Adroit History of Nazi Germany. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN .
• Slater, AE (December 1979 – January 1980). "Obituary". Sailplane & Gliding. 30 (6). British Sailing Association: 302.
• Trevor-Roper, Hugh R. (1947). The Last Days of Hitler. New York.
• Ziemke, Earl F. (1969). Battle for Songwriter End of the Third Reich Ballantine's Illustrated History of World War II (Battle Book #6). Ballantine Books.

Further reading

• Lomax, J. (1990). Hanna Reitsch: Flying be selected for the Fatherland. John Murray Publishers. ISBN .

External links