Hanna Reitsch: Hitler’s Female Test Pilot

Published Monday, June 12, 2006 in Aviation History  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

The woman who would one day become one of the best-known test pilots of the Third Reich was born on March 29, 1912, into an upper-middle-class family in Hirschberg, Silesia. From early on, Hanna Reitsch was an intense, determined and intelligent individual. She became fascinated with flying at a young age, reportedly attempting to jump off the balcony of her home at age 4 in her eagerness to experience flight. Looking back on her childhood, she wrote in her 1955 autobiography The Sky My Kingdom: ‘The longing grew in me, grew with every bird I saw go flying across the azure summer sky, with every cloud that sailed past me on the wind, till it turned to a deep, insistent homesickness, a yearning that went with me everywhere and could never be stilled.’

By the time she was 14, she had set her sights on becoming a flying missionary doctor in Africa. It was a dream that seemed likely to please both her authoritarian ophthalmologist father, a Protestant, and her devout Catholic mother. During her teens she studied the writings of Ignatius of Loyola to discipline her mind and develop highly focused concentration. She made a pact with her father that if she did not mention going to a glider school until she had completed her secondary schooling, she would then be allowed to learn how to fly. Thanks to her determined silence, she managed to fulfill that pact. On the condition that she would also take a course in what was then called ‘domestic science,’ she was allowed to go to the Grunau School of Gliding.

Reitsch had the good sense to realize that a domestic science course would serve her well in the primitive conditions she would likely encounter in Africa, and she dutifully undertook her studies at the Colonial School for Women at Rendsburg. There, in addition to her other lessons, she was taught how to care for domestic animals as well as to ride and shoot.

For young Reitsch, however, the real goal remained flying. Despite the derision of the male students as well as instructors — she was the only woman in her class — she was the first class member to pass the ‘A’ level beginning course. Authorities were so taken aback when they learned of her rapid progress that they made her retake the test — which she once again passed. She went on to pass the ‘B’ and ‘C’ tests before beginning medical school at the University of Berlin.

While studying medicine, she also sought permission from her parents to continue with flying lessons in Staaken. She later recalled, ‘I managed to convince them that for my career as a flying doctor in Africa it would be necessary for me to learn to pilot engined aircraft.’ She soon realized that most pilots knew little if anything about the engines of their planes. That seemed to her to be like a doctor who knew nothing about the heart. Never afraid of hard work or dirty hands, she started hanging out with the mechanics at the flight school and worked herself into their favor as they realized she was serious about learning about airplane engines.

The mechanics gradually gave her more challenging jobs. One Friday the master mechanic pointed to a worn-out engine and told her that she could have it to take apart and put back together again by the following Monday. She did just that, later recalling, ‘on the Monday morning, with torn and bleeding hands and covered from head to foot in oil and grime, I was able to show the foreman the reassembled engine.’ By doing repairs, helping out with chores, and polishing and moving airplanes, she also managed to eke her way through flight school. She demonstrated superb piloting skills, even doing stunt flying for motion pictures.

While attending powered flight school, Reitsch realized that a missionary doctor needed to know how to drive an automobile. She had no money for driving-school tuition but solved that problem in typically creative fashion. She began to visit with workmen who were operating earthmoving machinery near the airstrip. She would do the same dirty jobs they did and ask them questions about clutches, brakes, chokes and carburetors. They finally let her drive some equipment.