page_title: Hanna Reitsch
section_title: 1937–1945
hierarchical_section_title: Hanna Reitsch / Career / 1937–1945
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Scherl Bilderdienst Deutschlands Segelflieger auf der Rhön. Reichsluftsportführer Oberst Mahnke stattete gestern, den 27.8.36, den Segelfliegern auf der Wasserkuppe einen Besuch ab. Hier begrüßt er die bekannte Segelfliegerin Hanna Reitsch, die einzige weibliche Teilnehmerin des Wettbewerbs. 27.8.36 Bildber.: v.d.Becke 202-36 ADN/ZB-Archiv 12603-36 Hanna Reitsch beim Segelflug-Wettbewerb 1936 Bei der deutschen Segelflug-Wettbewerb 1936 auf der Wasserkuppe in der Rhön war Hanna Reitsch (l.) die einzige weibliche Teilnehmerin. Hier wird sie vom "Reichsluftsportführer" Oberst Mahnke (r.) begrüßt. (27.8.36 - v.d. Becke)
context_page_description: Hanna Reitsch was a German aviator and test pilot. During the Nazi era, she worked enthusiastically and extensively for the Nazi's and was awarded many Nazi-honours. She and Melitta von Stauffenberg flight tested many of the regime's new aircraft.
  She 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.
context_section_description: 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". She appeared in Nazi propaganda throughout the late 1930s and early 1940s.
  Reitsch was the first female helicopter pilot and one of the few pilots to fly the Focke-Achgelis Fa 61, the first fully controllable helicopter, for which she received the Military Flying Medal. In 1938, during the three weeks of the International Automobile Exhibition in Berlin, she made daily flights of the Fa 61 helicopter inside the Deutschlandhalle.
  In September 1938, Reitsch flew the DFS Habicht in the Cleveland National Air Races.
  Reitsch was a test pilot on the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber and Dornier Do 17 light/fast bomber projects, for which she received the Iron Cross, Second Class, from Hitler on 28 March 1941.
  Reitsch was asked to fly many of Germany's latest designs, among them the rocket-propelled Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet in 1942. A crash landing on her fifth Me 163 flight badly injured Reitsch; she spent five months in a hospital recovering. Reitsch received the Iron Cross First Class following the accident, one of only three women to do so.
  In February 1943 after news of the defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad she accepted an invitation from Generaloberst Robert Ritter von Greim to visit the Eastern Front. She spent three weeks visiting Luftwaffe units, flying a Fieseler Fi 156 Storch.
caption: Reitsch in 1936 at Wasserkuppe
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