Hitler's Heroine: Hanna Reitsch by Sophie Jackson Read Free Book Online

happily into the glider, little realising this was going to be one of the most frightening flights of her life. ‘Try flying her blind,’ Hirth said confidently as he set out to tow her into the air.
    It was a beautiful day and at 1,200ft Hanna cast off, taking full control of the Baby. Beautiful as the sky was, for flying it was disappointing: there was no wind and before long Hanna was heading back to the ground. Two hundred and fifty feet above the earth Hanna prepared to land – disappointed at the false start – when her wings quivered. Was this an unexpected up-current? Hanna circled and the glider climbed a little, then it suddenly dropped. Searching for the frail up-current she had just encountered, Hanna instead came across a second, stronger one. She began to climb again, first steadily, then faster and faster until, before she knew it, she had risen to around 1,500ft in barely two and a half minutes. A more experienced pilot would have been worried by this change. Hanna did not immediately sense anything was wrong. Instead she was pleased to be rising again. Then her eyes came off the instruments and looked out into a hideous black storm cloud.
    It had only formed in the last few minutes, unobserved as Hanna had obeyed Hirth’s instructions to fly blind. Now she looked at it, not with fear, but with glee. ‘Here, at last, was the opportunity of an experience I had been longing for, to fly through a cloud.’ Was Hanna really so blind to danger? The answer is a simple yes. She was confident in her own abilities and besides: ‘… Wolf Hirth himself told me that as long as he has that knowledge [of flying instruments], a pilot can come to no harm.’
    Hanna was now 3,600ft up and headed for the storm. She broke into the base of the cloud, catching one last glimpse of the world below before she was absorbed into the black mass and a thick layer of cloud blocked out everything. Hanna pinned her eyes to her instruments. She climbed another 20ft, and for a moment she feared hitting the nearby Riesengebirge mountain, but then she relaxed: her instruments read 5,500ft and the Riesengebirge peak is only 5,200ft. Still Hanna underestimated the danger.
    Suddenly the storm erupted. Rain pelted her wings and turned into a loud hammering that overwhelmed every other sound, like an army of drummers pounding on the Baby. Worse, the windows were beginning to ice up and just beyond them Hanna could see rain and hail crashing out of the sky. Now she was afraid. Where was she? What would happen? Hanna checked the controls and they told her she was still flying true.
    As fast as it began, the storm ended, but at once it was replaced by buffeting winds that tossed Hanna about in her cabin, and still she was rising! Her instruments, when she could see them, read 9,750ft! Then they just stopped. They refused to move up or down. Panicking, Hanna thumped at them, but they didn’t move. They had frozen solid …
    With no instruments Hanna was truly blind. Scrabbling at the control stick, she made a desperate effort to maintain normal flight, but what was normal in this dense, hellish cloud? Before she could connect her thoughts there was a new noise, a sort of high-pitched whistle, first loud then quiet. For any pilot it was a terrifying sound – the sound of a plane slipping into a stall. The noise would stop any moment and then Hanna would have a split-second to push the Baby’s nose down before the glider became completely uncontrollable. The whistling ceased. Hanna thrust forward the control stick and lurched in her harness, but already it was too late. Helpless, falling forward, the blood rushing painfully into her head, Hanna was diving vertically, the Grunau Baby flipped over on its back. There was nothing to do. For an instant the Baby swung forward, but the dive continued, its speed building and building. Hanna pulled frantically at the control stick, heaving it back as hard as she could, trying to right the plane and