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Amy Johnson

High flier
Amy Johnson was born in Hull in 1903. An active and rebellious girl, at 18 she took the unusual step of going to university, graduating with a BA in Economics. Back in Hull, job opportunities were limited. Amy's parents prevailed on her to go to London, both to help her find work and to separate her from her boyfriend (who was Swiss, several years older than Amy and, she later discovered, married). In London, Amy lived in lodgings and had a series of secretarial jobs.

Flying was a fashionable, if expensive, hobby in the 1920s. Captivated by cinema images of flight, Amy joined the London Aeroplane Club in 1928. Despite being told, after her first lesson, that she would 'never make a flier', Amy persevered and gained her full pilot's licence in July 1929. Resistance to women in aviation was fierce; Amy found it impossible to get work as a pilot. Instead, she focused on working with aeroplanes and, in December 1929, became Britain's first qualified woman ground engineer.

The longest journey
Amy now decided to prove herself as a pilot with a record-breaking flight. In 1927 Charles Lindbergh had made the first solo Atlantic crossing. The following year, Bert Hinkler had made the first solo flight from Britain to Australia. Amy, whose longest flight to date had been the two hours from London to Hull, aimed to beat Hinkler's time of 15 days.

After canvassing support from various public figures, Amy was contacted by the oil magnate Lord Wakefield. He offered to meet half the cost of a specially equipped aeroplane and to arrange fuel supplies along the route. The aeroplane was a two-year-old Gipsy Moth – a biplane with an open cockpit, a 9-metre wingspan and a top speed of 90mph. Amy painted it green and named it Jason, after the trademark of her father's business.

Amy's takeoff at daybreak on 5 May 1930 aroused little interest.The idea of a young woman flying solo across the world seemed more absurd than heroic. Amy made steady progress and reached Karachi on the sixth day. She had now flown 4,000 miles and improved on Hinkler's time by two days. Popular interest began to mount. On the ninth day, coming in to land in Rangoon, Amy mistook a football pitch for her landing field and crashed. Three days' delay ensued, making it impossible for her to break Hinkler's record. Undaunted, she flew on, finally reaching Darwin on 24 May.

Unexpected celebrity
So many people surrounded the airstrip as Amy came in to land that she thought she'd arrived during an airshow. Bewildered by the crowd's adulation, she said: 'I'm afraid I didn't break the record, but you don't seem to mind that – it's jolly sporting of you.'

Back in Britain the Daily Mail bought Amy's story for £10,000 and groomed her for celebrity, eradicating the last traces of Hull from her accent. 'I was badgered with offers of public appearances,' she later recalled.

Burdensome as her celebrity was, it enabled Amy to meet other fliers. One of these was Jim Mollison who, in 1931, eclipsed both Hinkler and Amy herself by flying from Australia to Britain in nine days. A drinker and a gambler, Mollison had a louche charm which appealed to Amy. They were married in July 1932.

Later that year, Amy flew solo from England to South Africa, breaking a record recently set by Mollison. In 1933 she and Mollison attempted a joint non-stop flight from South Wales to New York, but ran out of fuel and crash-landed in Connecticut, injuring both of them. In 1936 Amy repeated her solo flight to South Africa, breaking a new record which had been set earlier that year. Since Mollison's 1932 flight, the journey time had been cut from 113 to 78 hours.

Turbulent times
The disappearance of Amelia Earhart in 1937 during an attempted round-the-world flight, discouraged Amy from further record-breaking attempts, which were, in any case, losing their popular appeal as flying became more routine. Her marriage was also in trouble, thanks largely to Mollison's infidelities. The couple divorced, painfully, in 1939. By now Amy's career was in difficulties, too. Prospective employers either dismissed her as a publicity-seeker or sought to capitalise on her fame. The 'proper flying job' she had dreamed of in 1930 seemed as far off as ever.

The outbreak of World War II changed everything. The Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) had been set up in 1938 as a ferry service, transporting RAF aeroplanes from storage depots to air bases and using civilian pilots who were unable to serve in the RAF. In January 1940 Pauline Gower, a pilot and aviation administrator, established a women's section of the ATA. Amy joined the ATA that May, glad of the chance of some everyday flying. ATA colleagues remember her as 'just mucking in with the rest of us'.

Beyond the limit
But the pilot who had spent years pushing herself to the limit had difficulty playing it safe. At 10.45am on 5 January 1941, ferrying an aeroplane from Prestwick to Oxford, Amy took off into stormy weather, saying she would handle it by going 'over the top' (above cloud cover) – something which ATA pilots, who flew without radio, were advised against. She was never seen alive again.

Amy's aeroplane was spotted over the Thames estuary at 3.15 that afternoon. Amy ejected, either because the aeroplane had been fired on by anti-aircraft guns or simply because, after four hours in the air, it was out of fuel. A nearby ship, HMS Haslemere, attempted to rescue her, tragically, she was dragged under the ship and killed. Amy was the first ATA pilot to die in service. She was 37.

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