Reitsch, Hanna

▪ German aviator

born , March 29, 1912, Hirschberg, Germany [now Jelenia Góra, Poland)

died August 24, 1979, Frankfurt am Main

      aviator who was the leading female German pilot in the 20th century.

      Reitsch originally trained in the 1930s as a flying missionary. She became the first German woman to win a captain's license, the first female helicopter pilot, and the first female test pilot in her country. In World War II she served as a test pilot for all types of German aircraft, including the jet-powered Messerschmitt Me 262 fighter and the prototype for the V-1 rocket. She did everything but fly combat missions during the war and was the first German woman to be awarded the Iron Cross (1942). Assigned to a voluntary suicide squad of aviators near the end of the war, Reitsch was one of the last persons to see Adolf Hitler (Hitler, Adolf) alive in the underground bunker in Berlin, and she flew the last German warplane out of Berlin in late April 1945. She was then captured by the U.S. Army and interned for 15 months, during which time she gave detailed testimony as to the “complete disintegration” of Hitler's personality that she had observed during her time spent in the Berlin bunker.

      Reitsch eventually set more than 40 endurance and altitude records for powered and motorless flight. She was the first person to fly a glider over the Alps, and her last gliding record was made in the United States in 1979. From 1962 to 1966 she directed the national school of gliding in Accra, Ghana. She published an autobiography entitled Fliegen, mein Leben (1951; Flying Is My Life).

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