Maybe, but it doesn’t mean he wasn’t a racist.
Paraphrasing Captain Kirk, but didn’t he say about Khan “We can damire him and be against him at the same time.”
Frank Herbert: “It’s easier to be terrified by an enemy you admire.”
Yes, but so was Scylla’s grandfather, and he once saved a little Negro child from drowning. Similarly, Lindbergh’s spying saved many lives of people, including, undoubtedly, some who were black. Who knows how long the war would have continued without Lucky Lindy’s treachery against the Nazi’s, his fellow racists.
That was not intended to be entirely serious. Lindbergh was a racist, but he wasn’t really all that much of a Nazi sympathizer. Ignorance mildly resisted in this instance.
Or, perhaps, he was simply supporting his country more? He seemed to be against joining the Allies.
As were most other white Americans during the 1930s.
I’ll paraphrase the historian Polybius who wrote on writing history:
Someone who is a good friend will always sing the praises of his friend to others and will denounce the enemies of his friend. However, a historian cannot do this. A historian must denounce his friend if it is warranted and must praise his enemies when it is warranted.
Otto Skorzeny was actually a member of the NAZI party and I can find a whole lot of things to praise him for. That doesn’t mitigate the fact that he was a NAZI though. You can even admire the S.S. for their ability to fight but that doesn’t mean you like the S.S.
Odesio
I’m not sure what is being admired here? She got to fly some historic aircraft. BFD. Bob Hoover is 10 times the test pilot she would ever be. At best she was a novelty act for Nazis.
… When they needed someone to be the last pilot in and, more importantly, out of Berlin, they called for her, to fly the head of the Luftwaffe. That’s not a novelty act. One of the first helicopter pilots ever. Flew the V-1 and figured out how to land it. (This was a significant problem with the test flights.) Flew the Komet.
And, of course, volunteer for the suicide corps.
She was an insanely brave, dedicated, and brilliant pilot.
Now, Mr. Hoover is a hell of a technical pilot, but I’ll put up her accomplishments against his fairly evenly. He might be better… I’m not sure, she was a hell of a glider pilot, too. He might be better, but she had more courage than any ten men I can think of short of Audie Murphy.
Signing up for the suicide corps makes her brave but picking up von Greim in a Storch is hardly anything difficult. You could fly that plane off a 250 ft runway (same plane used to rescue Mussolini). She gets the street creds of a professional German pilot in the war and that’s something above and beyond the career of a test pilot.
Bob Hoover brought back test aircraft that were, for all practical matters, not flyable. And that takes a pair. Even his war time record is impressive. As a fighter pilot he was shot down and imprisoned by the Germans but later escaped and stole an Fw 190, and flew it to safety. You will see him referred to as the pilot’s pilot and that rings true in the aviation community. He lead a very interesting life.
Just because someone holds evil views doesn’t mean they don’t have other admirable qualities or, at least in some cases, that they aren’t good/moral people in other parts of their lives.
I can understand how knowing a person has done or believes awful things may really color your entire view of them (I know it colors my view often enough) but in reality people are complex and they my very well have what are objectively admirable qualities while still doing or believing evil things.
I know who Mr. Hoover is. He is a great pilot, and a master of technique. But I don’t know how innovative a pilot he is, which is something Reitsch has in spades. She managed to figure out how to land a manned V-1 rocket. She was a test pilot on the first true helicopter… and she survived it.
And it wasn’t picking up von Greim, it was picking up von Greim through anti-aircraft fire in a slow-ass Storch. I’m not calling her the greatest pilot ever, but I am going to say she was easily the equal of the greats. And braver than many.
That didn’t make them sympathizers of Nazi Germany, however.
According to the Wiki siteon V-1’s her contribution was a myth.
Bob Hoover tested every German plane captured after the war including the 162 which was a death trap. When he was the test pilot for North American he experienced compressor stalls and loss of hydraulics with the F100 and still brought the plane back. His input in the F86 and F100 was substantial. He survived problems with the aircraft that other pilots did not and NA learned to listen to him.
I’m pretty sure a 59 mission WW-II fighter pilot who was shot down has some idea what anti-aircraft fire looks like. As I said before, he escaped from a POW camp and stole a German plane he’d never flown before and flew it to safety. He was the 2nd person in line behind Yeager to fly the Bell X1. According to him he was bounced from the #1 spot because he buzzed a local airport in my area while a test pilot at Wright field (take it for what it’s worth).
Check out his barrel rollwhile he pours ice tea.
The myth is her work on guidance and stabilization. The fact that she figured out how to land one of them is quite true. Slightly different issues, happening at different points in the design phase of the V-1. (Eg, one would be as the V-1 was developed, the other would be much later when they developed a piloted version.)
Mr. Hoover is a pilot’s pilot. I am aware of his 1G roll stunt with the coffee, and am in awe of how smooth he managed to do it. It’s a classic stunt, though, reminding me of a guy at the test track down in Laredo who used to do something similar with a marble and a bowl on the hood of a car.
…
Wait, he flew a 162? Man, those were death traps. But not as dangerous as the 163, which Ms. Reitsch test piloted.
And I’m sure Mr. Hoover knows what anti-aircraft fire looks like.
You know what? I’m going to concede the argument. Ms. Reitsch is not as good a pilot as Mr. Hoover. She’s only almost as good.
Therefore, she’s only as good as, say, Scott Crossfield.
Which makes her a novelty act for the Nazis.
… I mean, Scott was just the guy they chose to fly the old Wright. That overshadows his entire experience, and makes him a pretty face.
Or, wait, not. I’m not calling her the best in the world, Magiver. I’m saying that she was insanely brave, insanely good, right to where she did things maybe five other people in the world could, and two of them are Yeager and Hoover. She helped develop an entire new form of flying. (eg, her helicopter work… which she demonstrated inside a building ) as well as her high-speed work (ME 163, V-1), as well as her later glider work, some of which records stand to this day.
Her glider work is probably more impressive than landing a V-1. I’m not sure why this is such a great feat. Fly above stall speed and flare. I’m more impressed that someone would get into a vehicle that is launched at 365 mph than I am with landing it. I don’t see it as any different than the 163 (which Hoover would also have test flown). I’m impressed with the helicopter as it appears to have a full cyclic control that was also independent between the rotors. I’d like to see that set up. I seriously doubt that they simply turned over a prototype to her to fly without instruction. She was not the first to fly it nor does it appear she was the primary test pilot for it but she did make the publicity flights inside a building.
She gets an A for bravery and skill as a test pilot. She had more balls than I will ever have when it comes to flying. Considering the Germans weren’t too fond of hydraulic controls it is impressive that she flew both the high speed jets and the large glider/powered transport (both of which would take a tremendous effort to control. She even points out the folly of this in the video that was posted, which is also something Hoover talks about. German pilots didn’t fly the jets as much as arm wrestle with them.
I give her more credit than you’re assuming but maybe not as much as you.
She was a helluva pilot, but Hoover’s been my god since I saw him treat an Aero Commander like it was an aerobatic glider.
Lindbergh’s posthumously published diaries make clear his anti-semitism.
But as noted, he actively spied on the Nazis, and opposed war with Germany because he didn’t think we could win (and he feared the destructiveness of the new aviation technology to ‘destroy civilization’, meaning European civilization), not because he wanted the Nazis to win. His refusal to appear at an anti-Axis rally to throw away the medal given to him by Hermann Goering was not out of line with his lifelong antipathy for displays designed to sway opinion. He was not an ass-kisser.
An often-quoted falsehood is that ‘Lindbergh liked the Nazis because he was German’. In fact, Lindbergh’s father was Swedish, his mother mostly English and French. The Nazis (more specifically the big fat Luftwaffe Commander Goering) considered the tall blond guy who blazed aviation trails sort of a credit to (their) race. This helped him get access to information on their air power. Walter Ross cited sources (in “Lindbergh: The Last Hero”) claiming that the Nazis didn’t invade Sweden because of Goering’s respect for Lindbergh.
German American groups were in fact highly critical of Lindbergh for accepting the verdict that German immigrant Bruno Hauptman was guilty of kidnapping and murdering Lindbergh’s son, citing lingering anti-German sentiments following World War I. (It didn’t start with OJ).
I joke that my ability to admire Lindbergh comes from my experience as a musician. If you grow up admiring the work of Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Hank Williams, Miles Davis, et al., you learn to separate achievements from flaws.
That. They were all jerks and even I would have trouble keeping my yap shut in front of such an important person who was also buying, but their flaws were separate from what caused you to admire them.