Read Online Spitfire Women of World War II by Giles Whittell - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Giles Whittell
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suddenness the ground vanished as the clouds swirled around the Oxford in a cold embrace and forced me to climb on instruments ⦠I tried to keep the angle of climb constant. Suddenly at four thousand feet the clouds splintered into bright wintry sunshine; beneath me the clouds stretched to all horizons like a soft woollen blanket. Desperately lonely and frightened, I searched for a gap. There was none. Whilst I stayed above I was safe. Like a spotlight the sun cast a shadow of the Oxford on the top of the clouds and circled it with a halo of rainbow hue. I had the odd thought that I was the shadow and the shadow was me. Curiously I watched it to see what it was going to do next; silly thing, it was going round in circles.
The petrol gauge drooped inexorably. I had to go down ⦠Reluctantly I throttled back and eased the nose down.The clouds embraced me like water around a stone as I slowly descended. Two thousand feet. Fifteen hundred. One thousand. Six hundred. Itâs no good, prompted experience, get back. Ignoring the urgent warning I eased lower with the altimeter ticking off the altitude like a devilish clock. If I were lucky I would be over the hill-less sea. If not, I had not long to live. Suddenly the clouds broke, revealing, just beneath, the grey, sullen waters of the Bristol Channel. I pulled off my helmet and wiped the sweat from my face before turning towards the Somerset coast faintly visible to the east.
I looked at the petrol gauge. Twenty minutes left to find an aerodrome. Absently I worked out the little problem. Twenty times sixty. Two sixes are twelve. Add two noughts. Thatâs it. One thousand two hundred seconds before I wrecked the aeroplane and paid the penalty for not turning back. But all the luck in the sky was with me that day. Soon after crossing the coast an aerodrome blossomed out of the ground like a flower from the desert. Pulling the Oxford round in a tight circuit I landed on the glistening, rain-soaked runway.
Next day on returning to Hatfield I learned that Amy Johnson was dead.
There is not much that can be said with any confidence about Johnsonâs last flight, though it must have droned on against an appalling crescendo of fear. For those left to reconstruct it over the years there is also the knowledge that, for all her fear, she had every reason to believe until the last second of her life that she would survive this scrape as she had so many others.
Did she, in fact, kill herself? She did once tell a friend that she was sure sheâd finish up in the drink. And it was alleged by Jimmy Martin (later Sir James, an aircraft builder who never quite finished an aircraft for her to fly) that she told him her first impulse on learning years earlier that Hans Arreger had married someone else had been to end it all by finishing her flying training and then crashing. But the idea that her doomed run down to Kidlingtonwas a suicide mission is even less plausible than the more popular conspiracy theory that she was carrying a mystery passenger on a clandestine or illicit trip (some speculated she was smuggling the faithless Arreger back to Switzerland, even though there is no evidence that she was still in contact with him) â and had to bale out because of a catastrophic malfunction or even after being hit by friendly fire.
The truth was almost certainly more prosaic, but just as deadly. She went âover the topâ, as she said she would and as Sorour also did. But she couldnât âcrack on throughâ because there were no cracks in her swathe of sky: just deep, unrelenting cloud. Sorour had risked everything by descending through it. Johnson actually risked much less by summoning the courage to do what she had always dreaded and bale outâ something, amazingly, that she had never had to do before. After three and a half hours the Oxfordâs second tank ran dry. As the two engines died, she feathered the propellers and levelled the plane at
The petrol gauge drooped inexorably. I had to go down ⦠Reluctantly I throttled back and eased the nose down.The clouds embraced me like water around a stone as I slowly descended. Two thousand feet. Fifteen hundred. One thousand. Six hundred. Itâs no good, prompted experience, get back. Ignoring the urgent warning I eased lower with the altimeter ticking off the altitude like a devilish clock. If I were lucky I would be over the hill-less sea. If not, I had not long to live. Suddenly the clouds broke, revealing, just beneath, the grey, sullen waters of the Bristol Channel. I pulled off my helmet and wiped the sweat from my face before turning towards the Somerset coast faintly visible to the east.
I looked at the petrol gauge. Twenty minutes left to find an aerodrome. Absently I worked out the little problem. Twenty times sixty. Two sixes are twelve. Add two noughts. Thatâs it. One thousand two hundred seconds before I wrecked the aeroplane and paid the penalty for not turning back. But all the luck in the sky was with me that day. Soon after crossing the coast an aerodrome blossomed out of the ground like a flower from the desert. Pulling the Oxford round in a tight circuit I landed on the glistening, rain-soaked runway.
Next day on returning to Hatfield I learned that Amy Johnson was dead.
There is not much that can be said with any confidence about Johnsonâs last flight, though it must have droned on against an appalling crescendo of fear. For those left to reconstruct it over the years there is also the knowledge that, for all her fear, she had every reason to believe until the last second of her life that she would survive this scrape as she had so many others.
Did she, in fact, kill herself? She did once tell a friend that she was sure sheâd finish up in the drink. And it was alleged by Jimmy Martin (later Sir James, an aircraft builder who never quite finished an aircraft for her to fly) that she told him her first impulse on learning years earlier that Hans Arreger had married someone else had been to end it all by finishing her flying training and then crashing. But the idea that her doomed run down to Kidlingtonwas a suicide mission is even less plausible than the more popular conspiracy theory that she was carrying a mystery passenger on a clandestine or illicit trip (some speculated she was smuggling the faithless Arreger back to Switzerland, even though there is no evidence that she was still in contact with him) â and had to bale out because of a catastrophic malfunction or even after being hit by friendly fire.
The truth was almost certainly more prosaic, but just as deadly. She went âover the topâ, as she said she would and as Sorour also did. But she couldnât âcrack on throughâ because there were no cracks in her swathe of sky: just deep, unrelenting cloud. Sorour had risked everything by descending through it. Johnson actually risked much less by summoning the courage to do what she had always dreaded and bale outâ something, amazingly, that she had never had to do before. After three and a half hours the Oxfordâs second tank ran dry. As the two engines died, she feathered the propellers and levelled the plane at
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