The Sky My Kingdom

% ^tiding DiBratrg of The Sky My Kingdom To many the name of Hanna Reitsch will already be familiar. She was the woman air ace and test-pilot who flew almost every German military aircraft during the war, from the famous Focke-Wulf 190 to the vicious rocket Me 163, which shot up to 30,000 feet in ninety seconds. She played an important part in developing the suicidal piloted Vis with which the Nazis at last desperately sought to stave off their inevitable defeat. She it was too who flew into Berlin in April 1945 with the new Chief of the German Air Staff, and was one of the last people to see Hitler alive in his bunker. In Germany she is almost an legendary figure; and by any reckoning she is one of the greatest pilots the world has known. This is her own story. It is one of the most illumi nating war-books that have come out of Germany, giving as it does an insight into the plans of the Luft waffe at many stages of the war. Yet it is more than a war-book, for Hanna Reitsch's extraordinary career as a test-pilot was only the most dramatic phase of a life which has been wholly devoted to flying. She is in a real sense a child of the air age, and the sheer joy of flight, whether in gliders or in powered aircraft, has seldom been so vividly communicated as it is in these pages. HANNA REITSCH THE SKY MY KINGDOM HANNA REITSCH Translated by LAWRENCE WILSON THE BODLEY HEAD • LONDON First Published in England 1955 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. Apartfrom any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, 1911, no portion may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiry should be made to the publisher. Printed in Great Britain by JOHN GARDNER (PRINTERS) LTD., HAWTHORNE ROAD, LIVERPOOL, 2O for JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD LIMITED, 28 Little Russell Street, London W.C.I Contents The Child that Watched the Sky 9 I Take to the Air 14 From Gliding to Powered Flight 29 Medical Student at Kiel University 41 My First Flight in a Storm-Cloud 45 I Become a Gliding Instructor 55 The Rhon Soaring Contests 58 Stunt Flying for the Films 61 Soaring in Brazil and the Argentine 64 The German Institute for Glider Research 76 Training Glider Pilots in Finland 78 Pupil at a Civil Airways Training School 82 Flying at Night 88 Across Europe to Lisbon 89 Test-Gliding 101 A Bird Soars over the Alps 111 First Flights for the "Luftwaffe" 117 Flying Indoors 119 A Visit to the U.S.A. 129 Adventures in Africa 138 My Home 149 Test-Pilot in Wartime 155 The Iron Cross 170 I Crash in a Rocket Plane 173 Conversations with Himmler 181 With the Troops on the Russian Front 185 I Fly the Vi 188 The Last Journey to Berlin 199 I Live to Fly Again 215 Index 219 List of Illustrations Hanna Reitsch frontispiece facing page Hanna Reitsch's Training Glider: a photograph taken before the war 48 Wolf Hirth, who taught Hanna Reitsch gliding, helps her into the cockpit 49 With my mother 64 My father 64 Before the Vi was adapted as a human glider-bomb, Hanna Reitsch experimented with an engineless Me3 28, launched in mid-air from a mother-plane 65 A Dornier 17, equipped for cutting barrage balloon cables. At the time when the Luftwaffe was concerned at the high rate of loss of bombers in British balloon barrages, Hanna Reitsch carrried out experimental work with this aircraft 65 Hanna Reitsch as a military test pilot during the war 112 The Sea Eagle, the first flying boat glider. Hanna Reitsch directs the crane as she is lifted out after the first experimental trials 113 One of the most hazardous testing operations carried out by Hanna Reitsch, was to land on a "bed of ropes" in a glider. It was intended to develop this method of landing for use by small observation planes on board ship 113 The rocket-propelled Messerschmitt Me i63a which shot up to 30,000 feet in go seconds. In this aircraft, which was designed specifically for breaking up daylight bomber raids, Hanna Reitsch was seriously injured during experimental work 128 The standard VI flying bomb, as launched against London, etc., from sites in France and elsewhere 128 The piloted "suicide" version of the VI 129 The two-seat version of the VI flying bomb, without power-unit, in which prospective suicide pilots were trained 129 1. The Child that Watched the Sky TUTHAT CHILD is there that lives, as I did, midway VV between Reality and Fairyland, that does not long sometimes to leave altogether the familiar world and set off in search of new and fabulous realms ? Such dreams have always visited Mankind, are born, first, in the open and eager minds of children and find in flying their fulfilment. My parents had shown me as a child the storks in their quiet and steady flight, the buzzards, circling ever higher in the summer air and so, when I, too, expressed a longing to fly, they took it for a childish fancy, that like so many of our youthful enthusiasms, would be forgotten with the years. But 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. My father was an eye-specialist and head of a private eye- clinic in Hirschberg, Silesia, where we lived. From an early age, I took it in turns with my brother, Kurt, to accompany him on his daily rounds in the clinic, regaling the patients with childish gifts which I had made myself and later, when I visited them on my way home from school, with stories of my adventures, both real and imaginary. My father was a born doctor and though I was too young to realise it then, I noticed and was impressed by the personal care and attention which he lavished on each of his patients. Later I came to know that helping and healing had so come to fill his life that his work as a doctor gave him complete happiness. Any sphere of activity, for example a University appointment, that would have deprived him of his patients he never seriously considered and offers in this direction were invariably rejected. Perhaps for that reason, IO THE SKY MY KINGDOM he was particularly pleased to see me take an early, still quite childish, interest in his medical activities. Thus I soon acquired an interest in my father's work and, for his part, he spared no pains to encourage me, obtaining, for example, from the butcher the eyes of dead animals to show me their construction and how small operations could be performed. My mother had been brought up as a Catholic and although we followed my father's denomination and lived as Protestants, her Catholic background retained its influence. This situation caused her some difficulties of conscience, but not wishing to upset my father, she kept them to herself and I only heard of them much later. I often used to kneel beside her when she interrupted her daily affairs to pay a short visit to church and though she did not know it, it was by her personal example that she gave her children the most convincing lessons in piety. Once my mother had had forebodings that she would die at my birth, but when the time came—it was a stormy night in Spring—they proved unfounded, for she recovered normally and was able, some years later, to have another child. For that reason, perhaps, despite her unbounded love for my brother and sister, she felt particularly close to me, as I did to her, though I, too, loved each member of my family equally. My mother and I lived in each other, each sensing the other's thoughts without need to confess or conceal, and to us, it was as natural as any other of Nature's mysteries, which remain no less mysterious for being evident to all. In our family, it was accepted as a principle, so obvious as to be unspoken, that a girl could only have one task in life, namely, to marry and become a good mother to her children. Owing to my interest in medicine, however, also to my mother's religious example and the recent experience of my own confirmation, I decided, when I was about thirteen or fourteen, that I wanted to become a doctor—not an ordinary one, but a missionary doctor, and not only that, but also, and above all, a flying missionary doctor. THE CHILD THAT WATCHED THE SKY 11 When my father saw the persistence with which I stressed this aspect of my future career, he took me on one side and suggested I make a pact with him. If I could succeed in not mentioning another word about flying until, in two or three years' time, I had passed my school leaving certificate, then he would allow me, as a reward, to partake in a training course in gliding at Grunau, which was not far from Hirsch- berg and where there was a well-known School for Glider Pilots.

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