German Women Pilots at War, 1939 to 1945 (Essay‪)‬

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Today it is almost unknown that women pilots actively contributed to Germany's war effort during World War II, other than perhaps Hanna Reitsch (1912-1979), the exceptional test pilot of the 1930s and 1940s. But she was not the only German woman pilot flying between 1939 and 1945. At the onset of the war, women pilots had trained alongside men to become ferry pilots for the paramilitary NS Flying Corps (Nationalsozialistisches Fliegerkorps, NSFK). The Flying Corps also employed women pilots as managers of its aircraft repair yards, and in other auxiliary functions. Towards the end of the war, at least five women worked as ferry pilots within the Luftwaffe, holding a captain's rank and wearing uniforms. Women also worked as company test pilots, and two of them were experimental test pilots, receiving their assignments from the Luftwaffe. They performed stunning flights to test novel dive brakes, cut the cables of barrage balloons, test pilot visibility, and improve bombing accuracy. In 1944, after the Luftwaffe had lost the air superiority contest, at least sixty women were recruited by the NS Flying Corps and were employed as glider instructors to advance training for Luflwaffe recruits. By war's end, in May 1945, many more women were still in instructor training, waiting for their chance not only to be employed, but also to regain access to flying--a privilege they had been denied since the war had started in September 1939.