The Women Who Flew for Hitler

Clare’s third book, The Women Who Flew for Hitler, tells the extraordinary story of the only two women to serve Nazi Germany as test pilots, both of whom received the Iron Cross, yet who ended their lives on opposite sides of history.

Brilliant pilot Hanna Reitsch was the world’s first woman to fly a helicopter, the first person to fly one inside a building, and later tested rocket planes and even a manned version of a prototype cruise missile – the V1 flying bomb or doodlebug. A fanatical Nazi, in the last days of the war she begged Hitler to let her fly him to safety from his Berlin bunker.

Her nemesis, Melitta von Stauffenberg, an exceptional aeronautical engineer and test pilot for the Stuka dive bombers that were synonymous with the Blitzkrieg, was part Jewish, and joined the clandestine German resistance. In July 1944 Melitta was at the heart of the most famous attempt on Hitler’s life, the Valkyrie bomb plot.

The Women Who Flew for Hitler was longlisted for the Historical Writers Association prize, and is under option for TV.