One of the things that set Hitler apart from his Weimar political rivals was that he avidly used air travel. Flying was a sign of modernity and manly vigor. The propaganda film Triumph of the Will famously has Hitler's plane descend accompanied by Wagnerian music. Throughout the 1930s, Hitler used three Ju-52s, named Immelmann I, Immelmann II, and Heinrich Gontermann (both WWI aces). These Ju-52s did not have too much in the way of special defensive measures. The war changed that and led to the creation of specialized defensive equipment.

Hitler's personal pilot Hans Bauer had felt that the Ju-52s were too vulnerable and slow given the looming war and in 1939 and convinced Hitler to upgrade his personal aircraft to a FW-200 Condor. The plane, christened Immelmann III, carried no armament but had some armor for Hitler's upholstered seat equipped with a parachute and adjacent escape hatch. Subsequent Condors acquired for Hitler's use added more armor, armored glass windows, and further refined the special parachute-equipped chair. In addition to back armor, the chairs had a hinged armored plate that would protect the occupant from beam attacks. The VIP seats also had instruments so that their occupants would know the speed and course of the aircraft. Other FW-200s for use by the Chancellery and Nazi state had defensive armament. Hitler's flights to battlefield theaters usually had a heavy fighter escort. Upon inspecting a more advanced Ju-290 maritime strike aircraft in 1943, Hitler demanded that he receive one as a personal transport. This Ju-290 had both defensive armament and the same system of escape and armor refined in the Condors. Hitler never flew in this aircraft as it was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid in 1945.

The Immelmann III escape system was tested but never used operationally. Both volunteers and mannequins showed the system could work, but the odds of a middle-aged man with Parkinson's using it successfully were quite limited. Hitler's flights too became ever more restricted as Germany lost air superiority in 1944. Bauer presided over a small fleet of specialized aircraft yet the war situation rendered them superfluous.

Sources

Brown, Eric. Wings of the Luftwaffe. Ottringham: Hikoki, 2010.

Sweeting, C. G. Hitler's Squadron: The Fuehrer's Personal Aircraft and Transportation Unit, 1933-45. London: Brassey's, 2002.