page_title: Erich Warsitz
section_title: Post War
hierarchical_section_title: Erich Warsitz / Biography / Post War
caption_attribution_description: Grave of Erich Warsitz, the first jet pilot, (Cemetery of Barbengo, Switzerland)
context_page_description: Erich Warsitz was a German test pilot of the 1930s. He held the rank of Flight-Captain in the Luftwaffe and was selected by the Reich Air Ministry as chief test pilot at Peenemünde West. He is remembered as the first person to fly an aircraft under liquid-fueled rocket power, the Heinkel He 176, on June 20, 1939 and also the first to fly an aircraft under turbojet power, the Heinkel He 178, on August 27 the same year.
context_section_description: After the end of the war, Warsitz was living in an apartment in the American sector, but at 3 a.m. on the night of 5 / December 6, 1945 he was abducted by four Soviet officers. Numerous interrogations followed, concentrating on his former work on the development of rocket and jet aircraft in the OKH and RLM, at Peenemünde and the Heinkel factory. He was required to sign a contract which obliged him to co-operate with the Soviets for a period of five years on the development of related technology, but he refused. As a result, he was condemned to twenty-five years forced labour. Shortly after this he was transported to Siberia, to the penal colony 7525/13.
  After his return in 1950, thanks to Chancellor of West Germany Konrad Adenauer, he founded his precision mechanical firm “Maschinenfabrik Hilden”, until, in 1965, he retired.
  In April 1983, Warsitz suffered a stroke and as a result died at the age of 76 on July 12, 1983, at Lugano, Switzerland.
caption: Grave of Erich Warsitz (Cemetery of Barbengo, Lugano, Switzerland)
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