First female test pilot - Hanna Reitsch 2

One of the best pilots ever, regardless the political regime she lived in.

Hanna Reitsch, Nazi Germany's celebrated woman test pilot who had flown the VI rocket bomb in sub orbital flight in the early 1940's -- 20 years before the first American spaceman -- was actually history's first astronaut.

Hanna started with gliders. Her passion for the air soon overtook her interest in medicine, and she left medical school to become a full-time glider pilot (Germany had been forbidden to build "war planes" after WWI, which meant that most of the planes constructed in Germany were built without engines). She went on to become an instructor in gliding at the Horngerb in Swabia and also worked as a stunt pilot in films, but she really distinguished herself in competition.

She soon became Nazi Germany's ideal woman, young and vivacious, daring and highly publicized by the Nazi propaganda machine.

If she hadn't been on the losing side and if she had been later willing to admit the horrors of the Nazi regime, Hanna Reitsch would be honoured in history books as the greatest woman pilot.

At a time when women were expected to stay in the kitchen, she was one of the world's top glider pilots. She held 40 world aviation records, was the first to cross the Alps in a glider, first to fly a helicopter and first to fly a jet plane. She was the first woman awarded the iron Cross and was the world's first woman test pilot.

History records she flew into a burning Berlin at night in the last days of the war and landed a small plane safely on a street full of firing Russian tanks. A direct hit on her plane mangled the foot of the pilot, Ritter von Greim, who had been summoned by Adolf Hitler.

Hanna stayed three days in the Hitler underground bunker then flew the last plane out of Berlin before it fell to the Russians. Her eye-witness account of the last days of Hitler are an important part of history and her flights in the V-1 rocket are a first chapter in space travel.

In 1953 Hanna won the bronze medal in the International Gliding Championships in Madrid, Spain. In 1957 she set two women's altitude records for gliders. She also continued to work as a research pilot. In 1959, she traveled to India, where she became friends with Indira Ghandi and Prime Minister Nehru, whom she took on a glider flight over New Delhi. In 1962, she founded the National School of Gliding in Ghana, where she stayed until 1966. Always drawn to people in power, she was friend with Ghana's president, Kwame Nkrumah and flew for him until he was deposed in 1966. She reported these experiences in a 1968 book, Ich Flog für Kwame Nkrumah.

She was accepted as a member of the American Test Pilots' Association and was received by President John Kennedy in the White House in 1961. A photo shows her standing near Kennedy, not wearing her self-designed uniform but a dress and carrying a woman's handbag.

She spent her last years quietly. The darling of Nazi Germany was a post-war outcast. Germans who adored her later shunned her.

Hanna Reitsch died by a heart attack at 67while was in bed at Frankfurt, Germany one year after setting a new women's distance record in a glider.

She never married, saying her man died in the war.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Astronaut
• Aviation
• history
• WW2
• test
• pilot
• gliding
• Germany
• woman
• record
• Nazi
• female

[spottydog4472]

listening to her - she demonstrates such a passion for flying and her descriptions are great to listen to..........

sad that chics these days just want brainless pop songs and fluffy poodles..

she was always a flyer first and Nazi second.....

and if germany was communist - she would have gone along with that too..

you cant tarnish ALL Americans for following a RIGHT wing republican neo war mongering goverment either -can you?

[voaresagi]

Great post.Thanks

[desertdreg]

that's hilter piloting the ME 163 AT 2:40?

[Plautus123]

coole frau.

[danieldewulf]

Hanna Reitsch-a German Hero 5***** who fought till the end to stop communism and zionism.Thank you.The Americans understood too late they were fighing against the wrong ennemy and were totally under zionist pressure.What does not mean that the holocaust has to be excused!But...what is happening in Palestine makes me furious ...Innocent Palestinians are now persecuted instead of innocent Jews...I think zionism is to be abolished, not the Jewish people who aren't zionist!

[statist0815]

Jetzt verstehe ich warum die so "beliebt" war. Habe das immer nur in Biografien gelesen . Andere Testpiloten schrieben das die immer die neuesten Maschienen fliegen wollte, sich die wissenschaftlichen Ergebnisse aber in Grenzen hielten. Ich denke es gab bessere weibliche Luftfahrtpioniere in Deutschland die obendrein nicht so NS belastet sind.

Die Gigant war doch nicht der Leukoplastbomber sondern das "beste fünfmotorige Flugzeug der Welt" oder?

[KwautLizard]

She is passionately portrayed as a flying heroine in the 1965 film 'Operation Crossbow', the best way to remember her.

[TikiKoelzer]

Too funny, This is my Great Aunt.

[landseerromeo]

Great video. But ich hätte das Interview viel lieber auf Deutsch gehört wie @ 6:16 Die Frau war halt mit Leib und Seele Pilotin...