Hitler's Heroine: Hanna Reitsch (15 page)

Dittmar had been testing early versions of the Me 163 and had had considerable successes, first reaching 400mph, then 571mph, then 623mph. The world speed record was just under 470mph. Before his death, Udet had seen some of the early flights and been both mystified and impressed by the stubby plane that flew so fast. After his suicide, development of the 163 looked to be in peril as it now had to compete with other projects, including the V1 and V2 rockets. Lack of funding delayed both, and the rival development teams each furtively guarded their pet projects and believed they were the answer to the war. One of those rocket men working on the V1 and V2 was none other than Hanna’s old gliding pal, Wernher von Braun.

Lippisch was determined to push through his project and wanted to recruit Hanna to take part in the latest tests. There may have been a degree of subterfuge to this request. Hanna was well liked by the higher echelons of the Third Reich, a poster-girl for German flying, with good contacts among the Luftwaffe generals. If she was on a project there was a good chance it would attract the notice of Ritter von Greim, Göring or even Hitler. This was how Lippisch intended to secure funding for the Me 163. Heini Dittmar was appalled at the idea of working with Hanna. ‘There are women who cannot bear it if a man comes into town whom they haven’t already been to bed with. For Hanna, aeroplanes are like men for other women. As soon as a new plane appears anywhere, her sole aim is to fly it,’ he told his colleagues bitterly.

Hanna, who was under the impression that she and Dittmar had reached a truce, would have been disappointed to learn of his unpleasant comments. Lippisch was unconcerned with Dittmar’s griping. He asked Hanna to come for a special one-off flight in the Komet in May 1942. Hanna was ecstatic: ‘To fly the rocket plane … was to live through a fantasy of Münchhausen. One took off with a roar and a sheet of flame, then shot steeply upwards to find oneself the next moment in the heart of the empyrean.’ Dittmar was relieved when Hanna left the airfield, thinking that now she would be satisfied and leave him alone to test fly the rocket. He was unimpressed when a colleague who had watched the flight remarked what an asset Hanna would be to the test team. Unfortunately for Dittmar, his relief was short-lived; he stalled a 163 during a test and injured his spine, effectively removing himself from the programme. Lippisch took this opportunity and replaced him permanently with Hanna.

The Messerschmitt 163b or Komet
was designed as an interceptor with a liquid-fuelled rocket motor. The advantages of the rocket engine were that it gave incredible speed and a fast rate of climb, but the Komet drank fuel like there was no tomorrow and a pilot was lucky to get eight minutes of powered flight, despite the fuel load weighing more than the empty aircraft. To try to improve performance the Komet had no retractable landing gear, instead it was launched on a wheeled trolley that was ditched in the air and landed using a retractable skid. This was hardly ideal and as the Komet had a landing approach speed of 137mph, miscalculation was painful, often resulting in back injuries to the pilot (as Dittmar had discovered).

From an operational point of view, the Komet was an excellent fast interceptor. It had to be held in reserve until the very last moment due to the short lifespan of its fuel supplies, but when it was released it would soar up into the air at amazing speeds, reaching enemy bombers within two or three minutes. Though the smoke plume from its rocket jets hardly made the Komet capable of stealth, its speed prevented enemy fighters from assaulting it as it launched among the slow bombers. Komet
pilots would try to inflict as much damage as possible before their fuel ran out and the Komet turned from a rocket ship into a glider. Even without fuel it was a wily opponent for the Allied fighters; it could dive safely at over 500mph and while its speed remained over 250mph it was nimble in the air. The only problem was landing, which had to be done in one attempt as there was no means of powering the Komet away once it was heading down.

Initially the Komet put the fear of God into Allied flying crews. Zooming out of nowhere, its speed was devastating and though its attacks were short, the confusion and panic it caused put a severe dent in Allied morale. American pilots began to think their operational flights into Germany were at an end. The Komet was a complete unknown; unique in design and performance, it genuinely seemed that the Nazis had superior technology and would soon be winning the war. The Komet could have been the Nazi superweapon. So why wasn’t it? The main problem with all the rocket-powered jet aircraft in the Luftwaffe stable was the volatile nature of the fuels used. Hellmuth Walter had developed the 109-509 rocket motor for use in such aircraft. A previous engine using a ‘cold system’ had been tried in the Me 163a by Heini Dittmar and had broken the 1,000km/h barrier, but Walter was unsatisfied with the low thrust. So he created the ‘hot system’ for the 109, a mixture of C-Stoff (C substance) for use with the T-Stoff fuel found in the V1 flying bombs. When C-Stoff (a mixture of methanol, hydrazine hydrate and water) mixed with T-Stoff, it ignited and caused the latter to decompose into hot steam and oxygen. Though the mix was effective, it was highly toxic and prone to spontaneously exploding. The various tanks and fuel systems were also prone to leaks. Dripping T-Stoff was corrosive and anyone working around it had to wear a rubberised suit (as it could eat through organic materials, including human flesh). Pilots also had to wear special protective suits in case of a crash or leak that would send the corrosive fuel rushing over them. Just fuelling the plane was hazardous. C-Stoff was usually added first, the tanker carrying it hastening off the airstrip before a second tanker full of T-Stoff rolled up. Despite precautions, Komets did explode without ever taking off. In fact, it is believed that more Komet pilots were killed in accidental explosions caused by leaks than by the enemy.

On 23 June 1943 test pilot Rudolf Opitz attempted the first powered flight of the Komet using Walter’s ‘hot system’. It was close to a disaster. The Komet’s take-off trolley detached itself before he had fully left the ground and Opitz barely clambered into the sky. Then a pipe cracked, leaking burning T-Stoff into the cockpit. Opitz managed to land safely and escape the plane, but it was a clear sign of how dangerous the Komet could be to its own pilot.

New volunteers were roped in to learn to fly the Komet. Introduced to the radical design by flying in an unpowered version (the 163a), they were soon moved on to testing the real thing. The dangers inherent to flying the Komet were kept quiet, but the pilots were soon to witness the horrors an accident in the prototype could cause. On 30 November Alois Worndl misjudged his landing in a Komet and the aircraft flipped and exploded. He was lucky as he was killed quickly. Far less lucky was ‘Joschi’ Pohs, who released his take-off trolley too close to the ground (a danger Hanna remembered vividly). The trolley bounced back up and hit the underside of Pohs’ Komet. The engine failed abruptly. Pohs was too low to bail out, but landing was going to be dangerous too. Pohs desperately tried to get his craft down; the Komet was full of fuel, making it heavier than was usual for a landing. The plane proved difficult to control, Pohs clipped a flak tower and dropped heavily to the ground. Observers held their breath for an explosion. Remarkably there was none, but the screams of a man in agony suddenly rose from the downed Komet. Rushing to his aid, the rescuers made a gruesome discovery: Pohs had been eaten alive by the fuel of his plane. It had leaked through the seams of the overalls supposed to protect him and he had been cocooned in a terrible, flameless fire as the fuel burned through anything it touched. What remained of Pohs was discreetly removed from the Komet.

Accidents seemed to be becoming more and more frequent. Explosions were all too common. Despite this, the Komet was desperately needed to try and stem the flow of Allied attacks and it was rushed into production. This caused an added danger as forced labour was used to produce the aircraft. A Komet in the collection of the National Museum of the United States Air Force appears to have been sabotaged while under construction. A small stone was wedged between the fuselage fuel tank and a supporting strap. Eventually this would have caused a dangerous leak. Contaminated glue was also found in one of the wings, which would have caused the wing to fail in flight. Inside the Komet’s skin the saboteur had left a message in French:
Manufacture Fermée
(‘Factory Closed’) and
Mon coeur est en chomage
(‘My heart is unemployed’), referring to the occupation of France. How many Komets exploded due to such sabotage, or simply the inadequate sealing methods of the time, we can never know. They were certainly not the wonder weapon Hitler had envisioned. Two hundred and seventy-nine Komets had been delivered by the end of the war and one operational group, JG 400, had been formed. End-of-war scores were nine kills by JG 400, with a loss of fourteen aircraft.

When Hanna climbed into the cockpit of her first Komet it was to be an experience she would never forget. There was nothing comparable, at the time, to rocket-powered flight. Test pilot Erich Warsitz, who flew in the He 176 and the Me 262, described his first taste of rocket power vividly:

… this thunder, this gigantic noise, and always the air pressure which surrounded one and which one felt forward in the cockpit region … When it started, the full power of the rocket thrust tugged at the machine’s anchorage so that I had to grip the flange and play the strong man, otherwise the pressure would have ripped me off. I was extraordinarily impressed – enchanted.

Warsitz was describing a dummy plane, a carcass for testing the rocket engine which was strapped securely to the ground. Being escorted around it by Hanna’s old gliding friend Wernher von Braun, he felt its power, but he was also aware of the inherent dangers involved in rocket-powered craft. Near to the test ground a twisted lump of metal components was all that remained of a previous experiment – in fact, most tests had resulted in an explosion. A mechanic merrily pointed out the warped remains to Warsitz: ‘They exploded. And if you are unlucky, Herr Warsitz, and do not take great care, you will finish up on top of them.’ Von Braun was cagey on the matter, attempting to brush off the obvious signs of failure. He was keen to get a pilot into his rocket, even if it had not as yet proved stable. For him progress was more important than the life of one man. Still, the rocket plane held an enchantment all of its own which attracted willing pilots to test their luck. Hanna remembered:

To sit in the machine when it was anchored to the ground and surrounded suddenly with that hellish, flame-spewing din, was an experience unreal enough. Through the window of the cabin, I could see the ground crew start back with wide-open mouths and hands over their ears, while, for my part, it was all I could do to hold on as the machine rocked under a ceaseless succession of explosions. I felt as if I were in the grip of some savage power ascended from the Nether Pit. It seemed incredible that Man could control it.

There were unkind eyes watching Hanna as she flew. Fellow glider and test pilot Wolfgang Späte shared Dittmar’s anger over having Hanna on the team. Späte had crossed paths with Hanna several times over the years, usually at gliding competitions. The gliding world was not so big, at least at its higher levels where the best pilots flew. Dark-haired, dark-eyed Späte had proved himself a skilled pilot over the years, if not a very pleasant one. Nicknamed ‘Count Späte’ because of his arrogance, he had earned a number of awards, but not many friends, during his career. The problem for Hanna was that he was in charge of the secret unit of test pilots for the Me 163b. He was determined she would never fly a powered version of the rocket plane. Hanna had to content herself with flying an unpowered Me 163a that was towed into the air for her and then released to act as a glider. Hanna had done this enough times to have become quite contented with the 163 – it was just an awkward-shaped glider after all. But, as Dittmar had discovered, it was just when things seemed to be going well that they were likely to go wrong.

On her fifth flight things went horribly wrong. Hanna took off on a typical flight, towed by a twin-engine Me 110. Just under 30ft she was supposed to drop her removable undercarriage. She had done this four times before and reflexively reached for the release lever and pulled it. At once the plane juddered violently, shaking Hanna. From the ground red verey lights were launched and glowed in the sky. Something bad had happened: the red lights were a warning. Uncertain what had gone wrong, Hanna tried to contact the pilot of the Me 110, only to discover her communication system was out of order. What was she to do now? Hanna glanced at the tow-plane and realised someone was trying to attract her attention from the rear gun-turret. It was the observer who flew in the lead plane. He was waving a white handkerchief up and down, and the Me 110 was raising and lowering its undercarriage. It only took a moment for Hanna to realise what was wrong: her undercarriage had not released.

Not sure what to do and thinking Hanna might try to land from a lower height, the pilot of the Messerschmitt was towing her in circles around and around the airfield. Hanna didn’t fancy her chances from such a height, rather she wanted to go higher, try to cast off and hope her plane might respond to the controls. With no way of speaking with the pilot in the tow-plane, she resolved not to cast off until he guessed that she wanted to go higher. They soared up to 10,500ft before Hanna was happy to release her towrope. She pulled out tightly, trying to dislodge her recalcitrant undercarriage. Nothing moved below, but the plane shuddered violently, its natural line dramatically altered by the bulky weight and mass of the undercarriage. Hanna tried to think calmly: here, after all, was an opportunity of testing the capabilities of the 163 when hampered by a stuck undercarriage. There wasn’t exactly much else to do until she dropped low enough to land. Hanna turned the plane this way and that, testing all its angles. It did respond well, considering a huge mass of metal was hanging off its fuselage.