Hitler's Heroine: Hanna Reitsch (8 page)

Hanna loved Finland and the Finnish, particularly the saunas, to which she attributed the Finns’ excellent health and fitness. The trip went down very well with the Reich Air Ministry, which offered Hanna a decoration. Such things meant very little to Hanna at that time and she asked instead for permission to enrol at the Civil Airways Training School in Stettin. This was by no means a simple request. Civil aviation was treated with very little difference to military aviation; strict discipline was maintained at Stettin, officers keeping the trainee pilots in line. Worse, it was an all-male institution and many of the older officers would find it absurd, if not offensive, to have a woman at the school.

As illogical a desire as it seemed, Hanna had her reasons for wanting to go to Stettin. She still had only limited experience in motor-powered aircraft. At Stettin she would be taught and licensed to use a huge range of bigger and more powerful planes. Hanna had clearly impressed someone enough for the request to go through and she arrived at Stettin to looks of disapproval and amusement. Stettin confirmed Hanna’s often unrelenting opinion of male egotism and chauvinism. On one military-style parade she was berated for having a womanly chest, which affected the overall appearance of the line of trainees. At every turn she seemed to be picked on for her femininity. Naturally, she had no experience of military parades, so her early attempts were fraught with errors as she tried to copy those alongside her. She was mocked and ridiculed, forced to do extra drills and generally tormented, with the aim of sending her home in floods of tears. Hanna resisted the abuse and in time it began to ease. As she proved herself in the air, so her colleagues warmed to her and stopped seeing her as an intrusive girl but as another pilot. The commanding officer at Stettin, Colonel Pasewald, found her ‘a totally uncomplicated person … she had no particularly feminine charms and wiles, a very fine instinct for flying, and no sense of danger. When she flew, it was like anyone else going for a walk – she had mastered the medium.’

She may have been unusual in Germany, but elsewhere female aviators were not such an anomaly. In Russia during the war whole units of female pilots were known and accepted. Admittedly, they too had a rough journey into aviation, often mocked and criticised, issued with men’s clothing which was far too big (Hanna complained of this at Stettin) and treated as inferior, until they started to prove themselves. But that was still several years away and Hanna had very little concern for what was going on in Russia.

More worrying were political activities in Germany. By the time Hanna was finishing her course in 1935 it was very apparent that the Heinkel, Focke-Wulf and Junkers were not confining themselves to producing civil aircraft. Nor was there any point in prolonging the charade that Lufthansa was only training its pilots for civil flight – anyone noting the military-style training at Lufthansa schools would have questioned that anyway. Germany finally announced the rejuvenation of the Luftwaffe, which it had been building up secretly for years. The world swayed a little and anxiety trickled into everyone except the most ignorant. Hanna could not avoid this; airfields, once deserted, now buzzed with officers and aircraft. Men gave stiff-armed salutes and hung up swastika flags. Peacetime conscription was introduced and Hanna sensed the world was turning in a dangerous direction. Forever the patriot, she blotted out the worst of her fears, concentrating on a planned trip to Lisbon in May to demonstrate German gliding – the PR wagon was off again. Hanna thought of the trip as a means of showing Germany in its best light and downplaying people’s fears – everything would turn out all right, after all.

Almost instantly her desire for a peaceful and non-controversial time in Lisbon was shattered when, having made an unplanned stop on a French military airfield, her companion was discovered to be carrying a camera. It had been strictly forbidden for such equipment to be brought and it caused natural consternation among the French, who started to ask whether Hanna was a spy. Things rapidly got out of hand. Rumours reached the local inhabitants that two Germans had been detained on suspicion of espionage and a crowd gathered at the airfield. When they spotted Hanna or her companion they spat and jeered at them. The French threatened to dismantle Hanna’s plane, but that was the least of their worries if they could not prove themselves innocent. The French were cagey and took hours over their interviews. Hanna asked, unsuccessfully, to make a phone call, and in the end it was only via the intervention of a French soldier that she was granted her request. She managed to contact the German consul, who was far from pleased to hear of her predicament. Through various channels he got an order through to the French commandant that
the
Hanna Reitsch was to be released at once and allowed to fly on to Lisbon. Political pressure asserted, the commandant reluctantly released his suspects.

After the frightening ordeal in France, Lisbon proved a ray of comic relief. The festival was lively and exuberant, the Germans were welcomed with open arms and the displays went well. But it was with some relief that Hanna returned to Germany and to her old job at Darmstadt. Hanna had impressed enough people to earn herself a promotion and now worked under the supervision of Hans Jacobs, the chief test pilot. A number of experimental gliders came her way, none quite so difficult or as well remembered as the Sea Eagle. The Sea Eagle was a first: a sea-going glider primarily to be used in scientific expeditions (though, of course, with military potential). Hanna’s role as test pilot was to work out its kinks and flaws, to check its balance, examine it for possibly dangerous faults and to experiment with its limitations. She was also there to discover if it was actually possible to launch and land a glider at sea. The Sea Eagle was a beautiful glider with tilted wings that did indeed resemble the bird of the same name. She was narrow and could only carry her pilot in a rather cramped cockpit, with little insurance against submerging in the ocean on a heavy landing. Her wingspan was over 56ft, strongly gulled to keep them clear of spray, but she was a lightweight at only 240kg. She needed to reach around 36mph to get airborne.

Hanna’s first flight in the Sea Eagle was abortive. The motorboat hired to tow the glider into the air was not powerful enough and could not reach take-off speed. Tests were transferred to a lake at Bodensee and Dornier supplied a Maybach speedboat to act as tow. The Maybach had the speed to launch Hanna into the air, but starting from water proved a new challenge. Originally a 300ft towrope was used, but its weight and the drag caused by it slicing through the water proved an irritation. On her first flight Hanna rose to 30ft, but almost immediately the towrope began to drag her back down and she cast off for fear of hitting the water. Observers from the boat were annoyed; she should have held on.

On the next attempt that is exactly what Hanna did; there was a sudden jar against the plane, the towrope seeming to jerk the glider forward, then a sheet of water flew up into the air and overwhelmed the Sea Eagle. Hanna plunged down, submerging beneath the surface of the lake, no time to think of holding her breath or reacting. She was lucky; the natural stability and buoyancy of the Sea Eagle caused it to resurface a short distance from the spot it had crashed. Both glider and Hanna were unharmed, though she was a little shaken by the experience. Everyone was agreed that this wasn’t a practical method for taking off.

The towrope was shortened to 230ft and balsa floats were added to reduce the drag of the rope ploughing through water. This proved a reliable method. Tests were even more successful when the speedboat was switched for a Dornier amphibian flying boat – the Dragon-Fly. Dragon-Fly could tow the Sea Eagle in most weather conditions and the slipstream caused by its airscrew created another advantage – it left a relatively calm strip of water in its wake in which Hanna could hold the Sea Eagle and thus avoid any heavy waves that the Dragon-Fly might be encountering. The Sea Eagle’s biggest test came during a storm. Since her experience in the Grunau Baby, Hanna had been cautious about such weather, but one of the aims of the Sea Eagle’s designers was to test her in rough weather. After all, she was designed to land on water in any weather – how would they know if she was seaworthy if she was not tested when a storm was rippling the waters?

Ashore, the anxious Sea Eagle crew and designers stood waiting with every life-saving device they could think of in case the worst happened. Hanna shut that thought out of her mind, if she started to imagine that the Sea Eagle might not survive the landing she would never go up. Hanna had nerves of steel when it came to flying, perhaps even a slight sensation of being charmed, which normally overcame any fear she might feel. As her mother would tell her, placing her life in the hands of God was the only way to get through such dangers. If He chose for her to perish now, there was nothing she could do anyway. With this strange comfort in mind Hanna took off.

Hanna headed into the storm. The winds buffeted her left and right, she struggled to keep the Sea Eagle level and on course for her designated landing spot. Below, the waters of the Bodensee were bubbling and churning. The little boats that had followed Hanna out had to turn around and head for shore. She was alone with the elements. Hanna soared for an hour before coming in to land. She had to reduce her speed to 35mph; fortunately the Sea Eagle had a hull like a boat and landed smoothly on the water. Unfortunately, the storm had churned the Bodensee into a writhing mass of waves that rocked and rolled the Sea Eagle. No boat could reach Hanna in such conditions so she negotiated her craft to a crane that stood at the edge of the waters. Even then it was no simple task to attach the crane’s hook as Sea Eagle rocked about. Hanna had to balance herself on one of the wings to maintain an even keel. Finally the Sea Eagle made it to dry land without harm – she and her pilot had proved themselves.

The Sea Eagle was next put to work testing a catapult designed to enable heavily laden transport planes to take off in a small space. Did it occur to Hanna as she climbed into the Sea Eagle’s cockpit that she was testing a device that could prove very handy in combat and when launching troop-carrying planes? Apparently not. The catapult consisted of a steel cable which ran over a cone-shaped drum. One end of the cable was attached to the nose of the glider, so that as the cable was taken up by the drum, the Sea Eagle was dragged towards the scaffolding of the catapult set on the shore. Hanna had to judge the moment perfectly to release herself so she could sail clear of the catapult, turn and land. ‘Distinctly unpleasant,’ she remarked of the task. It required precision and care. Once the Sea Eagle had pioneered the procedure the catapult went on to be tested on powered planes.

The year 1935 turned into 1936. The Berlin Olympics loomed, but Germany was riddled by internal tensions. Jews were being ostracised further and further. Hitler had declared that no Jews would be allowed on the German Olympic team, causing outrage across the globe. The US was threatening to withdraw. If it had, the Olympics would likely have been ruined, for the American team was by far the biggest in the games. Goebbels went into damage limitation; Hitler bit down on his No Jews orders and made token efforts to encourage Jewish athletes. It was all propaganda; anti-Semitic signs were removed for the duration, but no one was entirely fooled and certainly Goebbels’ repeated phrase that the games would generate peace between nations was taken by many with a good pinch of salt. Still, the Americans came and for two weeks Berlin buzzed with promise and excitement.

The Olympic spirit was launched with the winter games at Garmisch. Hanna flew in gliding demonstrations with Peter Riedel and Ernst Udet, an ace from the First World War who would soon become a good friend to Hanna. Ernst Udet, Udlinger, as he was nicknamed, had put on weight since he had been a hero of the First World War. His uniform fitted snugly over his expanded form, and his short stature accentuated his dumpy appearance. His square face was jovial, quick to smile or give a sly wink of understanding to the many pilots, designers and engineers he came into contact with. Udet was not a typical Luftwaffe officer: he never wore his cap straight, it was always cocked at a slightly jaunty angle. He dreamed of flight, but the technical side of aeroplanes eluded him and as the war years engulfed him it became more and more apparent that Udet was stuck in a mind-set for a conflict that had been fought and lost two decades ago.

No German with even a passing interest in aviation could fail to recognise the name of Udet. Admittedly Ernst Udet had frozen with fear and was unable to fight in his first encounter with the enemy, but despite this he went on to become one of the First World War’s great aces. His final score was sixty-two victories, though still a long way off the greatest ace of all, Baron Richthofen, who achieved eighty kills. In comparison to the scores German pilots would achieve in the Second World War, these figures seem almost paltry, but with the technology and skills of the time they were impressive. Consider that at the beginning of the war the only armament a biplane had was a second man behind the pilot carrying a gun and the figures become more understandable. By the end of the First World War, of course, planes were fitted with machine guns that could fire through the propeller blades, but even so making a kill was remarkably difficult. Udet ended the war as the top-scoring surviving pilot.

Udet’s war had been fought from outside the strict German military system. Having learned to fly at his own expense, Udet began the war as a non-commissioned pilot. When he was commissioned it was as a reserve officer, effectively barring him from higher command. Udet was not disheartened; he was not comfortable with leadership, rather he preferred the thrill and excitement of flying. Described by some as a playboy and a talented amateur, Udet was content in his plane, far from the complications of politics and orders. He was very good, however. His rival, Richthofen, was an adequate pilot, compensated by being a superb marksman. In contrast, Udet was an amazing flyer: on one occasion he fought the great French ace Georges Guynemer to a draw. His downside, from a German perspective, was his happy-go-lucky temperament, his failure to be ruthless and his inability to take anything terribly seriously. No wonder he was passed over for command of a squad after the death of Richthofen, in favour of a lesser-known pilot named Göring.