Hanna Reitsch----Luftwaffe ?

TA152 · #1 (**permalink**) December 1st, 2002, 06:53 PM

Was Hanna Reitsch a member of the Luftwaffe and if so what rank was she. Also were there any other female pilots in the German Air Force during the war? I read that she did test flights on the Me-163 and the V-1 and smashed her face testing a plane once because she did not buckle up. I am thinking she was just well connected and not a member of the military, but would like to know for sure.

charlie don't surf · #2 (**permalink**) December 1st, 2002, 07:51 PM

I posted some on trf before, I hope it helps:

Here's some interesting things I found:

Quote:

Nazi Women

By 1944 the Nazis had almost a half million women in uniform serving as support troops. The Luftwaffe assigned 100,000 of these female troops (along with an estimated 900,000 men) to anti-aircraft batteries.

Hanna Reitsch was the only woman in World War II to be awarded the German Iron Cross First Class. Although technically a civilian she tested military aircraft, including the earliest versions of jet planes, and piloted members of the German high command throughout the war.

Uniformed Nazi women also served as concentration camp guards and managed slave laborers in factories. Maria Mandel, an SS Supervisor at Auschwitz, was noted for her personal brutality. In December 1947 she was condemned as a war criminal by the Supreme People's Court in Krakow and executed.

In a marked departure from the early days of the war when German leaders proclaimed that Russia's use of women soldiers demonstrated they were a weak enemy who would easily be defeated by 1945 Hitler approved the formation of coed guerrilla units and all female battalions in the Volkstrum, (the People's Army). Gertrud Scholz-Klink, a Nazi leader, formed battalions of women to carry on the final defense of Germany. There were several newspaper accounts, including one in the "Petersburg Dijen", of female German combat troops fighting near Warsaw.

As the Allies closed on Berlin boys in the Hitler Youth and its "sister" organization the Bund Deutscher Madel were reportedly ordered to fight armed with nothing more than rocks and sticks. Eyewitness accounts confirm that at least some boys and girls were combatants during the fall of the city.

http://www.gendergap.com/military/Warriors-2.htm

Hanna Reitsch and Beate Uhse- Koestlin seems to be the most famous female pilots of the war. Being a pilot isn't the only thing Beate got famous for...(I'm not going to tell- you have to find out for yourself

)

some links that might be interesting:

http://www.hh.dlr.de/frauen/frauen2.html

http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/women.html

http://www.ctie.monash.edu/hargrave/uhse.html

http://archiv.ub.uni-marburg.de/sum/76/sum76-3.html

http://www.ndepublishing.com/reviews_hist.html

Read more about Hanna Reitsch at: http://www.ctie.monash.edu/hargrave/reitsch.html

A link to a list of books about german women in uniform:
http://members.home.nl/hoevenberg.bosman/GERMANY.htm

best regards

Martin Bull · #3 (**permalink**) December 1st, 2002, 08:04 PM

Interesting question.

I don't think that Reitsch was officially a member of the Luftwaffe ; according to her autobiography the honorary rank of 'Flugkapitan' was conferred on her by Udet in 1937 for her work on pilot training and test-flying, ostensibly for the German aircraft industry.

In September, 1937, :-

'The Luftwaffe testing station was at Rechlin and... Udet ordered me to report there for duty as a test-pilot. This was my first incursion into the military sphere and I little suspected that it marked the beginning of a new chapter in my life, in which I was to be increasingly involved in military flying '.

On 27th March 1941 she received the Gold Medal for Military Flying with Brilliants from Goring, and the following day the Iron Cross (2nd Class) from Hitler in person ( she was the first woman to be awarded the Iron Cross in WWII ).

All the above information is from the first edition of 'The Sky My Kingdom', 1955.