Melitta Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg

Melitta passed the diploma for university entrance in 1922. There she studied mathematics, physics and engineering, eventually specialising in aeronautical engineering at the Technical University of Munich. In 1927 she graduated cum laude.

Melitta started working for the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt (DVL), an experimental institute for aviation, in Berlin-Adlershof in 1928, and took flying lessons. But in 1936 she was forced from her job as Ingenieurflugzeugführerin (aeronautical engineer) because of her paternal grandfather's Jewish origins. Although her father had sincerely converted to Christianity at age 18, that didn't matter in Hitler's Germany.

In 1937 she married the historian Alexander Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, and on 28 October 1937, she was given the honorary rank of Flugkapitänin, or "flight captain", a rank reserved for test pilots in Germany at the time, and became only the second woman in Germany, after Hanna Reitsch, to achieve this. She eventually gained licences for all classes of powered aircraft, the acrobatic flying licence, and the glider licence.

At the beginning of World War II, Melitta wanted to work for the Red Cross but was ordered to become a test pilot for the Luftwaffe at the central Erprobungsstelle test facility in Rechlin, Mecklenburg. Still a civilian she was officially seconded from Askania. She did test dives in warplanes, up to 15 times a day, from a height of 4,000 metres. From 1942, Melitta Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg continued her test-flights at the Luftwaffe's technical academy in Berlin-Gatow. She was attacked by Allied aircraft, and was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class on 22 January 1943; the medal pinned on her by Goering on 29th. She made her dissertation for her Masters qualification in 1944, and received an A grade. She then became technical chief of the Versuchsstelle für Flugsondergeräte, another test institute, in the same year.

When the 20 July plot failed, she was arrested with the rest of the Stauffenberg family. Although her two brothers-in-law, Claus and Berthold were executed and the other adult members were held in concentration camps, she was released on 2 September, because of the military importance of her work. As the name von Stauffenberg was anything but popular among the Nazis, she was now officially addressed as "Gräfin Schenk" instead of "Gräfin Schenk von Stauffenberg". Her husband and her sisters-in-law, one of them pregnant, were confined in concentration camps, and the Stauffenberg children were taken away from their mothers. Melitta used her prominent position to help as much as she could.

She felt loyal to Germany, but not to the National Socialists. She therefore supported the Luftwaffe, but she confessed in her diaries that this moral conflict tormented her.

Melitta maintained contact with the incarcerated members of her extended family even though they were imprisoned in concentration camps. Her status and the possibility that the prisoners might be useful in a bargain with the Western Allies when Germany finally fell kept them moderately well looked after. She flew several times to Buchenwald concentration camp once she found in March 1945 that her husband was there. The research facilities were dispersed from Berlin ahead of the Soviet advance, Melitta's activities to Wurzberg where she found that a RAF raid had destroyed her house and its contents.[3]

On 4 April together with her assistant pilot, Hubertus, she set out for Buchenwald, seeing from the air that the special prisoner compound was empty - the prisoners had been moved to Regensburg- she flew back to the Weimar. They flew some personnel from Weimar in an overloaded Siebel Si 204 onto Pilsen where they exchanged the Siebel for a two-seater Bü 181 Bestmann trainer on 6 April. At Marienburg Hubertus left her to fly on to Straubing and then Regensburg to look for her husband. By that point her husband and other prisoners had been moved again; Melitta got a Gestapo authorisation to visit the commandant at Schonberg where they had been taken.

She took off early on 8 April 1945, flying low to the ground along the line of the railway to navigate. An American fighter looking for trains to attack along the line mistook her aircraft for a German fighter and attacked near Straßkirchen, Bavaria. She crash-landed the aircraft and was conscious when civilians arrived to help. She asked for assistance to get out of the aircraft, and was extracted from the aircraft alive. The civilians reported her most serious injury appeared to be a broken leg.

A local doctor, Hans Siegl from Straßkirchen, arrived at the scene but as a Luftwaffe doctor and other military were on scene his services were not needed; she was taken off in an ambulance. Von Stauffenberg's injuries did not appear life-threatening, but she died two hours later. Her remains were taken to the hospital in Straubing, where the town mortuary book noted as the cause of death "...skull base fracture, tearing of the left thigh, fracture of the right ankle." Her husband learned of her death a few days later. She was buried in St Michaels Cemetery, arranged by Staubing airbase commander's assistant.[3]