Read Online Spitfire Women of World War II by Giles Whittell - Free Book Online
Authors: Giles Whittell
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overdraft and a debt to her father. It failed to rescue her marriage, though. She and Mollison were divorced in 1936, and the approach of war found her broke again and desperate for work. In June 1939, after a brief stint as editor of The Lady Driver , a decidedly earthbound new monthly, she accepted her first full-time flying job, shuttling day and night between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight for a localairline known as the Solent air ferry. The Daily Mirror considered it a story. âFolks, youâve got a chance of being flown by a world-famous air pilot for five bob a time,â it announced. It was honest work, but it ended abruptly with the outbreak of war and failed to serve as a springboard to the job she really wanted: the head of the ATA.
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Johnson already knew and liked Pauline Gower. They had met at the London Aeroplane Club in 1931, when Gower was immersed there in the improvised sort of aero-engineering apprenticeship that Johnson had glamorised the year before.
Years later, she spent a weekend at the Gower family home near Tunbridge Wells, where Pauline and her friend Dorothy Spicer invited Amy to join their two-woman firm providing joyrides in the sky to crowds who would queue up at fairgrounds across the country for a taste of the fad that was changing the world. Johnson considered them ânice girlsâ, but declined. Theirs was a raucous, retail sort of flying, taking off from new airfields for new crowds every day of the summer. Johnson considered it several steps beneath her. But as far as the aviation establishment was concerned, she was beneath them.
Francis Shelmerdine and Pop dâErlanger favoured Gower for the ATA job on the grounds that she had never been an aviation record-seeker like Johnson, âwith all the publicity which is attached to that roleâ. This may have been sensible: the idea of putting women in RAF aircraft in wartime was an invitation to scarlet-faced apoplexy in the RAFâs own high command, especially if they were to be led by the curious, chippy creature who had pioneered the heretical unisexing of the cockpit. But dâErlangerâs verdict was also a simply coded confirmation that Gower was âOne of Usâ. Johnson, with her flat, Humberside vowels and undisguised need for recognition â not to mention money â clearly was not.
But Pauline Gower didnât forget about her. On the contrary, after she was appointed head of the ATAâs womenâs section shesent Johnson a formal letter inviting her to apply to join up. Johnson did, and was put on a waiting list. In May 1940 she agreed to take a flying test that Gower assured her would be a formality, but Johnson appears to have been simultaneously revealed as a clumsy lander (which she was) and repelled by the idea of mucking in with the other hopefuls. She described one of them in a letter home as âall dolled up in full Sidcot suit, fur-lined helmet and goggles, fluffing up her hair etc. â the typical Lyons waitress type ⦠I suddenly realised I could not go in and sit in line with these girls (who all more or less look up to me as God!), so I turned tail and ranâ.
It was true, or true enough. The younger pilots did revere her, but when Johnson eventually enrolled in the ATA in May 1940 she found she didnât mind. One of her admirers was Jackie Sorour, a tungsten-tipped South African who affected a ditzy innocence but would later pull off an extraordinary aerial hitchhike to Pretoria and back. Sorour, a qualified instructor by the age of twenty despite her motherâs dogged opposition to her flying, was interviewed by Gower at Hatfield in July 1940, and immediately admitted to the ATA. From Gowerâs office, she wrote later:
I went to the crew room to find the pilot who was to give me a brief refresher on the Tiger Moth. There were four or five women lounging on chairs and tables. One was laughing as I entered. I looked at her
  Â
Johnson already knew and liked Pauline Gower. They had met at the London Aeroplane Club in 1931, when Gower was immersed there in the improvised sort of aero-engineering apprenticeship that Johnson had glamorised the year before.
Years later, she spent a weekend at the Gower family home near Tunbridge Wells, where Pauline and her friend Dorothy Spicer invited Amy to join their two-woman firm providing joyrides in the sky to crowds who would queue up at fairgrounds across the country for a taste of the fad that was changing the world. Johnson considered them ânice girlsâ, but declined. Theirs was a raucous, retail sort of flying, taking off from new airfields for new crowds every day of the summer. Johnson considered it several steps beneath her. But as far as the aviation establishment was concerned, she was beneath them.
Francis Shelmerdine and Pop dâErlanger favoured Gower for the ATA job on the grounds that she had never been an aviation record-seeker like Johnson, âwith all the publicity which is attached to that roleâ. This may have been sensible: the idea of putting women in RAF aircraft in wartime was an invitation to scarlet-faced apoplexy in the RAFâs own high command, especially if they were to be led by the curious, chippy creature who had pioneered the heretical unisexing of the cockpit. But dâErlangerâs verdict was also a simply coded confirmation that Gower was âOne of Usâ. Johnson, with her flat, Humberside vowels and undisguised need for recognition â not to mention money â clearly was not.
But Pauline Gower didnât forget about her. On the contrary, after she was appointed head of the ATAâs womenâs section shesent Johnson a formal letter inviting her to apply to join up. Johnson did, and was put on a waiting list. In May 1940 she agreed to take a flying test that Gower assured her would be a formality, but Johnson appears to have been simultaneously revealed as a clumsy lander (which she was) and repelled by the idea of mucking in with the other hopefuls. She described one of them in a letter home as âall dolled up in full Sidcot suit, fur-lined helmet and goggles, fluffing up her hair etc. â the typical Lyons waitress type ⦠I suddenly realised I could not go in and sit in line with these girls (who all more or less look up to me as God!), so I turned tail and ranâ.
It was true, or true enough. The younger pilots did revere her, but when Johnson eventually enrolled in the ATA in May 1940 she found she didnât mind. One of her admirers was Jackie Sorour, a tungsten-tipped South African who affected a ditzy innocence but would later pull off an extraordinary aerial hitchhike to Pretoria and back. Sorour, a qualified instructor by the age of twenty despite her motherâs dogged opposition to her flying, was interviewed by Gower at Hatfield in July 1940, and immediately admitted to the ATA. From Gowerâs office, she wrote later:
I went to the crew room to find the pilot who was to give me a brief refresher on the Tiger Moth. There were four or five women lounging on chairs and tables. One was laughing as I entered. I looked at her
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