Women Aviators (17 page)

Valentina became the most decorated woman of the Soviet Union, receiving the Hero of the Soviet Union medal in addition to the Order of the Red Star, the Order of the Red Banner, and the medal of a member of the Supreme Soviet.

After retiring from the military in 1946, Valentina worked in civil aviation, one of only a few women who were able to
continue in aviation. Even with everything the many Soviet pilots had accomplished, as soon as the war was over, they were strongly encouraged to return home and serve as wives and mothers. Valentina spent the remainder of her life living quietly with her family, including her husband, an army pilot captain, and her son. She died in 1993 at the age of 83.

T
HE LAST DAYS OF
World War II were exciting and dangerous— exciting for the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and other countries (known collectively as the Allies) because they were about to win the war. But Berlin, the center of power for Nazi Germany, was burning. Russian tanks had entered the city and were firing at anyone who didn't immediately surrender. Streets were destroyed, full of huge holes from the shells. One of those shots hit a small airplane. Somehow, though, the plane was still able to land in the center of the destruction. It was the only German plane that had been able to get to Berlin during the last days of the war. The pilot, Hanna Reitsch, had orders to bring General Robert Ritter von Greim to the German leader, Adolf Hitler.

The shot that hit Hanna's plane caused an injury to one of von Greim's feet. Hanna had to help him to Hitler's underground bunker. After two days in the bunker, Hanna took off; heavy gunfire showered her plane.

Unlike in the Soviet Union, female military pilots weren't allowed in Germany in World War II, with one exception: Hanna Reitsch. Fascism, the political beliefs adopted by Germany and Italy in the early 20th century, restricted women to the roles of wife and mother. Working outside the home was frowned upon. Despite this, some did have jobs, but very few were pilots. (Another German woman, Melitta Schiller, received the Iron Cross for performing about 1,500 test dives of German dive-bombers. But Hanna was Germany's top female aviator and a favorite of Hitler's.)

As the world's first female test pilot, Hanna tested many Nazi planes and weapons, even rocket-powered planes that would later lead to space travel. But her daring landing and takeoff in the last days of the Third Reich are what most people remember about her. She was one of the last people to see Adolf Hitler alive.

Hanna was born on March 29, 1912, in the eastern German province of Hirschberg, Silesia (now known as Jelenia Góra, Poland). Hanna's ophthalmologist father wanted her to be a doctor. She wanted to fly. She planned to combine the two and become a flying missionary doctor.

Hanna recalled jumping off a balcony when she was four, trying to fly like a bird. In her 1955 autobiography,
The Sky My Kingdom,
she wrote, “The longing grew in me, grew with every bird I saw go flying across the azure summer sky, with every
cloud that sailed past me on the wind, till it turned to a deep, insistent homesickness, a yearning that went with me everywhere and could never be stilled.”

She grew up during World War I and the immediate years afterward. The Versailles Treaty from World War I barred Germany from building “war planes.” Because of this restriction, gliders (which were like planes but had no engines) became popular in Germany.

At age 20, while in medical school, Hanna began taking glider lessons. She became an excellent glider pilot and was the first woman to fly over the Alps in a glider. She left medical school and began teaching and taking on stunt-pilot work in the movies. She even participated in an expedition to study South American weather.

Hanna competed all over the world. She held several glider records and became the first woman to earn the Silver Soaring
Medal for a cross-country flight. She set more than 40 world records, including women's world records for glider altitude, which she earned by reaching 9,200 feet (2,800 meters); nonstop distance flight, which she earned by traveling 190 miles (305 kilometers); and nonstop gliding, which she earned by staying in the air for 11.5 hours.

Hanna flew other aircraft as they became available. In 1938, she became the first helicopter pilot and took the first indoor helicopter flight in the Deutschlandhalle, an exhibition hall in Berlin. She described this way: “Professor Focke and his technicians standing below grew ever smaller as I continued to rise straight up, 50 meters, 75 meters, 100 meters. Then I gently began to throttle back and the speed of ascent dwindled until I was hovering motionless in midair. This was intoxicating! I thought of the lark, so light and small of wing, hovering over the summer fields. Now man had wrested from him his lovely secret.”

As one of the first working helicopters, the Focke-Wulf Fw 61 received a lot of attention. Hanna demonstrated it every night for two weeks and even showed famed pilot Charles Lindbergh what it could do. She set the first helicopter records for endurance, speed, and altitude. Hanna's skills attracted attention, and soon she was recruited to be a test pilot by the Luftwaffe. This German air force, which Hitler had been secretly growing, became an official branch of the Third Reich's military in 1935. After its existence became public, twenty squadrons were ready to go to war, and thousands more pilots joined up too. Hanna recommended an all-woman squadron, but that idea was rejected.

When Germany went to war, Hanna began testing various aircraft, including gliders, airplanes, helicopters, and weapons. She called German warplanes “guardians of the portals of
peace.” She became much in demand and was even given the honorary title of “flight captain.”

Hanna tested the first operational jet fighter, the twin-engine Me-262 Schwalbe (“swallow”). She also tested one bomber that had steel blades installed on the edges of its wings. It was developed to cut heavy steel cables attached to barrage balloons. Barrage balloons were a ground-based air-defense apparatus used to keep attacking planes from getting too close or accurate with weapons.

Perhaps the most dangerous plane Hanna tested was the Fieseler Fi 103R, intended to be a manned flying bomb. In an ideal scenario, the pilot would detach from the plane after directing the bomb toward its target, but the canopy made the chance of pilot survival very small. Hanna didn't recommend the Fieseler Fi 103R, not because it was likely to be a suicide mission but because she felt like the frame was unstable. She also had concerns about the engine's uncontrollable shaking and its noise level.

Hanna was a talented pilot who supported Hitler and the Third Reich. No one knows how much she knew about the events of the Nazi regime outside of flying—but she clearly admired Hitler. As the only woman awarded both the Iron Cross and Luftwaffe Diamond Clasp, she continued to wear the Iron Cross long after the war ended, even though many regarded it as a symbol of Nazi Germany.

Hanna left Hitler's bunker as the war was ending, and two days later, she surrendered to Allied forces. She was interrogated over the next 18 months. When asked if she was a Nazi, Hanna replied, “I was a German, well known as an aviator and as one who cherished an ardent love of her country and had done her duty to the last.”

When she left the bunker, she had carried with her a poison capsule filled with cyanide. Cyanide poisoning was one of
the methods Hitler chose for his own death. Why didn't she take it as well? During her interrogation with the US Army, on October 9, 1945, Hanna testified that the thought of never flying again stopped her. (Years later, she showed the capsule to another glider owner, which seems to speak to her love of flying.) Also, she realized that Hitler was growing more disturbed in his last days.

After the war, Hanna returned to flying and sharing her love of flying with other women pilots. Concentrating on gliders, Hanna won the bronze medal in the International Gliding Championships in Madrid, Spain, in 1953. She went on to set two more glider altitude records.

In 1961, the former test pilot for the Nazis met president John F. Kennedy and was accepted for membership in the American Test Pilots' Association. When she was 65, she flew a glider almost 600 miles (970 kilometers) in Pennsylvania and set a new distance record for gliders. A year later, she died of a heart attack.