Ханна Рейтш: Неміс авиаторы және сынақ пилотының өмірі мен еңбектері

German aviator and test pilot

Hanna Reitsch (29 March 1912 – 24 August 1979) was a German aviator and test pilot. Along with Melitta von Stauffenberg, she flight tested many of Germany's new aircraft during World War II and received many honors. Reitsch was among the very last people to meet Adolf Hitler alive in the Führerbunker in late April 1945. Reitsch set more than 40 flight altitude records and women's endurance records in gliding and unpowered flight, before and after World War II. In the 1960s, she was sponsored by the West German foreign office as a technical adviser in Ghana and elsewhere, and founded a gliding school in Ghana, where she worked for Kwame Nkrumah.

Reitsch was born in Hirschberg, Silesia, on 29 March 1912 to an upper middle class family. She was daughter of Dr. Wilhelm (Willy) Reitsch, who was an ophthalmology clinic manager, and his wife Emy Helff Hibler von Alpenheim, who was a member of the Austrian nobility. Despite her mother being a devout Catholic, Hanna was raised a Protestant. She had two siblings, her brother Kurt, a Frigate captain, and her younger sister Heidi. Reitsch began flight training in 1932 at the School of Gliding in Grunau. While a medical student in Berlin she enrolled in a German Air Mail amateur flying school for powered aircraft at Staaken, training in a Klemm Kl 25.

In 1933, Reitsch left medical school at the University of Kiel to become, at the invitation of Wolf Hirth, a full time glider pilot/instructor at Hornberg in Baden Württemberg. Reitsch contracted with the Ufa Film Company as a stunt pilot and set an unofficial endurance record for women of 11 hours and 20 minutes. In January 1934, she joined a South America expedition to study thermal conditions, along with Wolf Hirth, Peter Riedel and Heini Dittmar. While in Argentina, she became the first woman to earn the Silver C Badge, the 25th to do so among world glider pilots. In June 1934, Reitsch became a member of the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Segelflug (DFS) and became a test pilot in 1935. Reitsch enrolled in the Civil Airways Training School in Stettin, where she flew a twin engine on a cross country flight and aerobatics in a Focke Wulf Fw 44. In 1937, Ernst Udet gave Reitsch the honorary title of Flugkapitän after she had successfully tested Hans Jacobs's divebrakes for gliders. At the DFS she test flew transport and troop carrying gliders, including the DFS 230 used at the Battle of Fort Eben Emael.

In September 1937, Reitsch was posted to the Luftwaffe testing centre at Rechlin Lärz Airfield by Ernst Udet. Her flying skill, desire for publicity, and photogenic qualities made her a star of Nazi propaganda. Physically she was petite in stature, very slender with blonde hair, blue eyes and a "ready smile".

Reitsch died of a heart attack in Frankfurt at the age of 67, on 24 August 1979. She had never married. She is buried in the Reitsch family grave in the Salzburger Kommunalfriedhof. Former British test pilot and Royal Navy officer Eric Brown said he received a letter from Reitsch in early August 1979 in which she said, "It began in the bunker, there it shall end." Within weeks she was dead. Brown speculated that Reitsch had taken the cyanide capsule Hitler had given her in the bunker, and that she had taken it as part of a suicide pact with Greim. There is no record of an autopsy.

Fliegen, mein Leben. 4th ed. Munich: Herbig, 2001. (Autobiography)
Ich flog in Afrika für Nkrumahs Ghana. 2nd ed. Munich: Herbig, 1979. (original title: Ich flog für Kwame Nkrumah). Das Unzerstörbare in meinem Leben. 7th ed. Munich: Herbig, 1992. Höhen und Tiefen. 1945 bis zur Gegenwart. Munich: Heyne, 1984. Höhen und Tiefen. 1945 bis zur Gegenwart. 2nd expanded ed. Munich/Berlin: Herbig, 1978. .