Hall of Fame
PHOTOGRAPH: HARGRAVE - THE PIONEERS
B
ERLIN MOTOR SHOW, 1938. A petite blonde, just over 5 feet, strides briskly towards a strange looking contraption with twin rotors and settles in. The engine roars to life, the aircraft takes off and to the amazement of the audience executes a variety of manoeuvres, from take-off and hover to sideways flying, steeply ascending and slowly descending. Finally, it freezes in the hover and slowly executes a 360-degree rotation. Twenty six-year-old Hanna Reitsch ends the gripping performance with the Nazi salute. Hanna was flying the FockeAchgelis Fa-61—the world’s first fully controllable helicopter. Sporting a simple German design, the aircraft was fitted with the fuselage of a small biplane to mount two outriggers supporting contra-rotating rotors powered by a radial engine. Hanna repeated the act each night for three weeks. It was an impressive display, more remarkable since the whole demonstration was indoors! The slightest miscalculation would have resulted in a crash, taking a heavy toll in the crowded hall. Hanna was born in Hirschberg, Germany on March 29, 1912. An intense and intelligent child with a fascination for flying, she longed to be a missionary doctor. However, the Second World War intervened and had a profound effect on her. She soon became an enthusiastic admirer of Hitler and an unrepentant Nazi. At a time when women were mostly confined to the kitchen, Hanna was the world’s first female test pilot and flew practically everything available. Endowed with great courage and extraordinary skill— essential prerequisites for those in the forefront of aviation given the exceedingly high mortality rates at the time—she was the first woman to cross the Alps in a glider, first to fly a helicopter and first to fly a jet. During the war, the Germans designed a manned version of the V-1 bomb, the Fieseler Fi-103R manned missile. It had wings just three feet long, making it impossible to fly. Therefore, it was operated as a robot controlled by an early auto-pilot— something the clever German scientists designed—then precision-guided to its
target by a pilot on a suicide mission. Catapult launched from a sled, it produced more than 24-‘g’ acceleration force, enough to burst body organs, as
Hanna Reitsch (1912 – 1979) On one memorable occasion, while flying a top secret German rocket plane, the Me-163B Komet, the landing gear failed. Rather than abandon the expensive aircraft, Hanna Reitsch decided to land it, and nearly lost her life. Awarded the Iron Cross, First Class—the only woman to be conferred this medal—rumour is Hitler himself forbade her to attempt such a foolhardy feat again. emerged from failed experiments and dead pilots. Hanna flew it 10 times. Another daring feat was to fly straight at a simulated British balloon barrage in an effort to cut the cable. In one such trial (witnessed by Hitler) she had to fly very low into the 5.6 millimetre thick cable
in her twin-engine Dornier. The cable strands exploded, breaking two propeller blades. As a result, one engine tore loose and she began to lose height rapidly. She landed safely and was awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class and a diamond clasp—the first such award conferred on a woman and a civilian. A top secret German rocket plane was the fastest and most dangerous plane Hanna tested. Three male pilots had died in earlier attempts. First she flew the prototype as a glider. Then she flew the militarised version, the Me-163B Komet. In 90 seconds after takeoff, this experimental interceptor climbed to 30,000 feet at a 65-degree angle. It travelled at 500 mph, the fastest any human had ever flown till then. On one memorable occasion, the jettisonable landing gear failed to separate from the plane. Rather than abandon the expensive aircraft, Hanna decided to land it. She nearly succeeded, but at the last instant stalled and crashed into a field just short of the runway. Fortunately, there was no fuel aboard, or the little Komet would surely have exploded. At the hospital, doctors discovered that Hanna had fractured her skull in six places, smashed the bones of her nose irretrievably, displaced her upper jawbone, broken several vertebrae and bruised her brain severely. She nearly died. This time she was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class—the only woman to receive this medal. Rumour is Hitler himself forbade her to attempt such a foolhardy feat again. Probably the greatest woman pilot ever, in 1979, barely a year after she set a new women’s distance gliding record, Hannah Reitsch passed away quietly in sleep, succumbing to a massive heart attack. She once wrote, “Powered flight is certainly a magnificent triumph over nature, but gliding is a victory of the soul in which one gradually becomes one with nature.” It is no wonder that almost 30 years after her death, some of her 40 international flying and gliding records still stand. SP — Group Captain (Retd) Joseph Noronha, Goa Issue 2 • 2008
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