Hanna Reitsch

Aviatrix Only woman in World War II awarded

Reitsch was born in Hirschberg, Silesia onMarch 1912 to an uppermiddleclass family. She had a brother, Kurt, and a sister. She began flight training in 1932 at the School of Gliding in Grunau,.14 While a medical student in Berlin she enrolled in a German Air Mail amateur flying school for powered aircraft at Staaken, in a Klemm Kl 25.30,3334 She left medical school at the University of Kiel in 1933 to become, at the invitation of Wolf Hirth, a fulltime glider pilotinstructor at Hornberg in BadenWrttemberg.55 Reitsch contracted with the Ufa film company as a stunt pilot and set an unofficial endurance record for women of eleven hours and twenty minutes.59,61,63 In January 1934 she joined a South America expedition to study thermal conditions, along with Wolf, Peter Riedel and Heini Dittmar.6465 While in Argentina, she became the first woman to earn the Silver C Badge, the 25th to do so among world glider pilots.75 Reitsch became a member of the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt fr Segelfl

Source: Wikipedia