Hanna Reitsch: Hitler’s Female Test Pilot

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In 1934 Reitsch traveled to Brazil and Argentina as part of a German research expedition to test-fly gliders in extreme thermal conditions. Her growing reputation as a pilot resulted in her leaving medical school and accepting an invitation to become an experimental glider test pilot at the Deutschesforschungsinstitut fur Segelflug (DFS), the German Research Institute for Sailplane Flight at Darmstadt. She became involved in flight testing to address problems of stability and control and structural vibration. She also test-flew the first glider seaplane and evaluated the capabilities of new glider catapult mechanisms.

In 1936 Reitsch met Ernst Udet, head of the Technical Branch of the Ministry of Aviation and the highest-scoring German fighter ace to survive World War I. At the time, she was working on the development of dive brakes for gliders. After demonstrating the use of dive brakes in a vertical dive before Udet, other Luftwaffe generals and German aircraft designers, she was awarded the honorary rank of Flugkapitän, the first woman ever so honored. In 1937 she was designated as a Luftwaffe civilian test pilot, a post she would hold until the end of World War II. Reitsch and Udet shared a passion for flying and developed a close professional relationship that lasted until Udet, depressed by the crushing demands of his job, committed suicide in November 1941.

Reitsch also became close to another former fighter pilot and rising Luftwaffe star, Robert Ritter von Greim, a Bavarian ace who had scored 25 aerial victories during World War I and had been awarded a knighthood and the coveted Orden Pour le Mérite. Greim had been appointed by Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring to be the first squadron leader of the new Luftwaffe. Along with Udet, Greim witnessed Reitsch’s high-speed dive brake tests, which he found very impressive.

In the years leading up to WWII, Reitsch made a name for herself on the international flying circuit. In May 1937, she became one of the first Germans to fly a glider over the Alps. That same year, she set a world long-distance record and won the National Soaring Contest — the only woman entrant. She also traveled extensively, to Africa and to the United States. By the summer of 1937, Reitsch had completed her test pilot duties in the development of dive brakes. After Udet appointed her a civilian test pilot at the primary Luftwaffe research station at Rechlin, she was allowed to fly almost anything she could lay her hands on, which included most of the high-performance aircraft in the Luftwaffe inventory. Rather than seeing her work with these aircraft as a prelude to what she would one day characterize as ‘the tragedy to come,’ at the time she chose to view them as guarantors of peace. She later wrote: ‘Stukas — bombers — fighters! Guardians at the portals of Peace! And in this spirit I flew them, each time in the feeling that, through my own caution and thoroughness, the lives of those who flew after me would be protected and that, by their existence alone, they would contribute to the protection of the land that I saw beneath me as I flew….Was that not worth flying for?’

In February 1938, at Udet’s bidding, Reitsch would become the first person to fly a helicopter, the Focke-Achgelis Fa-61, inside a building, Berlin’s Deutschlandhalle. She had previously been called on to demonstrate the Fa-61 to American aviation legend Charles Lindbergh at Bremen, whom she afterward described as a man ‘whose simplicity of manner won all hearts wherever he went.’ She also became the first woman to be awarded the Military Flying Medal, thanks to her helicopter flights. But the prospect of appearing as what she characterized a ‘variety artiste’ in Berlin appalled her, even though Udet’s goal was legitimate — to prove before an international audience that the helicopter was fully controllable. Reitsch dutifully completed a series of indoor demonstrations. But as she later wrote, ‘Exactly how deep an impression my flight with the helicopter had made on the world at large I was not to realize till many years later, in 1945, [when] I came across an American soldiers’ magazine….The first thing that caught my eye was my name and then I saw that it contained an article describing in popular terms my flight with the helicopter.’

Tags: Aviation History, Flight Technology, Historical Figures, Women's History

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