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The Hindu
03-05-2025
- General
- The Hindu
When Amy flew solo from England to Australia
Who is Amy Johnson? A pioneering aviator, Amy Johnson was the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia. She achieved this in a little less than 20 days, as her flight lasted from May 5 to May 24 in 1930. It was the first of several other record-breaking flights for Amy, who went on to become one of the most influential and inspirational women of the 20th Century. The eldest of four sisters, Amy – born on July 1, 1903 – grew up in Hull, England, where her father ran a fish export and import business. After studying at Sheffield University, Amy moved to London, where she worked as a typist for a firm of solicitors. For reasons that we know not, Amy took a bus ride to Stag Lane Aerodrome in North London on a Sunday afternoon in 1928. That bus ride might have been the most important of her life as it turned her life upside-down, setting her out on a career path that would prove to be her calling. As the primitive biplanes took off and landed, Amy was spellbound and before long, she was spending all her spare time at the aerodrome. A string of firsts Bear in mind that the 1920s was a time when flying was dominated by the wealthy and famous. The few female pilots who were around were mostly the titled women. Not one to be deterred, Amy became a member of the London Aeroplane Club and sought flying lessons, backed by a supportive father. Flying didn't come naturally to Amy. In fact, her first instructor reportedly told her that she would never be an aviator. It took her 16 hours of dual flying – twice what was considered normal – before she could embark on solo flights. By July 1929, however, Amy had got her pilot's license. While she wasn't a born flier, she was definitely a 'born engineer,' a sentiment echoed by the club's chief mechanic Jack Humphreys. At a time when it was unusual for women to learn to fly, Amy went a step further and learned from Humphreys as to how to maintain an aircraft. She became the first British woman to earn a ground engineer's license later that same year. Following her historic flight from England to Australia that saw her become the first woman to fly solo between those two destinations in 1930, Amy cemented her place in aviation history with more record-breaking flights. This included one with Humphreys in July-August 1931, when the duo flew to Tokyo, setting record times to both Moscow and Japan. Following her marriage to Scottish pilot Jim Mollison in 1932, she was at it again, flying solo from London to Cape Town, South Africa in 1933 in record time – a record that she took back in 1936 in her last major flight. The couple known as the 'flying sweethearts' attempted a long distance record by flying across the Atlantic from Wales to New York. Even though they crash landed short of their target at Connecticut and both were injured, they were given a huge ticker-tape welcome at New York. The duo got to meet President Franklin Roosevelt and also became friendly with American aviator Amelia Earhart. For someone to whom flying had given so much, Amy's demise too came through flying. Following their divorce in 1938 and a brief stint as a commercial pilot, Amy began reconsidering her public role during the onset of World War II as she had by then ventured into businesses, journalism, and fashion. She decided to contribute to the war effort and joined the newly established Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) that was involved in moving aircraft from factories to air bases. Amy died during one such routine ATA mission, even though there are speculations as to what exactly happened as she was so far off course. These range from being part of a secret mission, to the more mundane theory that she simply got lost and had run out of fuel. Amy died on January 5, 1941, aged just 37. The historic flight In 1928 – the same year Amy had found her calling – Australian aviator Bert Hinkler set the record for flying solo from England to Australia, achieving it in 15.5 days. Soon after she learnt to fly, Amy dared to break this record. It was a daring dream as the longest flight she had attempted was a distance of 290 km from Stag Lane Aerodrome to Hedon Aerodrome, Hull. If she had to achieve the challenge she was setting out for herself, she had to travel 17,700 km! Following a long campaign during which she raised funds and secured financial backing, she set out from Croydon Airport on May 5, 1930 in a second-hand Gypsy Moth bi-plane that she called Jason. Without radio links to ground stations and reliable information about weather conditions, Amy braved it all, navigating using a compass, some basic maps, and a ruler that she used to plot the most direct routes. Such direct routes, however, took her over some inhospitable terrains. There were plenty of incidents throughout her journey as mountain ranges, desert sandstorms, hostile tribesmen, tropical storms, and shock waves from a volcanic eruption all made their presence felt during her flight. Among the many incidents was her forced emergency landing in Jhansi, India, on May 11 as she had drifted off course and was running out of fuel. Having somehow managed to land her plane between two barracks, Amy found help from the army officers and Jhansi locals. They had her aircraft repaired by the following morning and having enjoyed a night's rest in a bungalow – a luxury not afforded to her during most of the rest of the journey – Amy set off again, first to Calcutta and then to other places as she continued her solo flight. On May 24, 1930, Amy landed in Darwin, Australia and was received by a huge crowd as she had become a worldwide celebrity by then. In her own eyes, however, she had failed to break Hinkler's mark as she had required 19.5 days for the journey – four days more than what it took Hinkler. Mechanical difficulties and weather conditions had played a part in that. King George V and Queen Mary congratulated her, as did British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. They sang songs about her, fan mails poured in, and she was treated like a superstar. A million people lined up the parade route in London when she was driven through the streets in an open-topped car following her return to England in August 1930. There were 3,00,000 people to welcome her at Hull, her home city. Amy's life was never the same again as she was constantly under public scrutiny.
Telegraph
28-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The biplane that changed Britain: how ‘the Moth' took off
When, now long ago, I told my grandmother that I had just read Beryl Markham's book West with the Night, she was delighted. 'Oh, Beryl Markham! The last time I saw her, she was in the arms of the Prince of Wales under the wings of your grandfather's Puss Moth.' Only years later, during the research for my book, Captain de Havilland's Moth, would I make the connection: the occasion would have been the London Aeroplane Club's summer party of 1930. Markham was at that time conducting simultaneous affairs with the future The Moth quickly became a favourite of the wealthy and leisured. But when Captain Geoffrey de Havilland designed it, his dream was to do for the aeroplane what Henry Ford had done for the car with his Model T – to make what had been a preserve of the few a realistic proposition for many. If he could come up with a package that combined light weight with simplicity, ease of operation, reasonable speed and range, as close to £500 as possible, he would be successful. In the end, a Moth cost £650, putting it just in range of the emerging professional classes, and cruised at around 75mph carrying two people and overnight bags for up to 300 miles before needing to refuel. It was the world's first genuinely practical aircraft for the private owner. The princes, though, found themselves among familiar company. The monarch-in-waiting had many Moth owners in his friendship group: Denys Finch Hatton, famous for organising the prince's two African safaris and latterly as Karen von Blixen's doomed lover in Out of Africa, was one. Then there was Freddie Guest MP, a cousin of Often during my research, I found the Moth's least expected pilots the most interesting: in particular, the women. Amy Johnson, the typist from Hull, famously flew her Moth to Australia in 1930. Johnnie, as she liked to be called, was representative of a group of pilots who stood outside the ranks of the uber-privileged and who were the first champions of private aviation. Then there was Lotfia Elnadi, a telephonist from Cairo who, in the same year, became the first African woman to gain her pilot's licence. Though her mother gave full support, her father was unconvinced that this was at all a good idea until she flew him over the pyramids. He was an immediate convert. Another remarkable female pilot was Sophie Heath, who grew up in tragic circumstances. Her father, a member of the Irish Protestant Ascendancy, bludgeoned his wife to death while she held the baby Sophie in her arms. Brought up by a pair of disapproving aunts, Sophie was outstanding both academically and as an athlete becoming, first, an agricultural scientist and then a founder member of the Women's Athletics Association. As a competitor at the London Women's Olympiad of 1924, she won the silver medal in long-jump. In 1926, she became the first person to attain a private pilot's licence on a Moth and, incidentally, also the first woman in England to make a parachute jump from an aircraft. Her first husband having died, she married Sir James Heath, a man almost 45 years older than she was. Thereafter, Sophie was a regular air-racing competitor until Sir James, tired of bankrolling a woman he claimed he never saw, put a stop to his wife's gallivanting by announcing publicly that he would no longer be paying her bills and would be divorcing her in favour of a woman even younger than she was. Sophie went on to befriend the American aviation pioneer, Amelia Earhart, and, later, to set up a business operating Moths in Ireland. It was ultimately unsuccessful but arguably she did just as much as Amy Johnson to advance the role of women in this country. There were some tragic stories too. Maurice Wilson hoped to be the first person to climb Everest. He would achieve this by crash-landing his Moth halfway up. The son of a Bradford mill owner, Wilson was a decorated survivor of the First World War who never succeeded in settling down following his traumatic experiences in the trenches. Buying a second-hand Moth in January 1933, his aim was to learn to fly and take it out to the Himalayas to reach the summit in time for his birthday in May. Despite the best efforts of the British authorities to thwart him, he made it as far as the foothills – crossing the Middle East without proper maps – before his aeroplane was finally impounded. Undaunted, he set off on foot, eventually dying of exposure at 23,000 feet. His body was discovered a year later – not, though, clad in the women's underwear that he was suspected of wearing, even if his latest biographer makes clear that Wilson was, beyond doubt, a transvestite. Wilson's lack of maps was familiar to all of those who undertook long-distance flights at that time. For her flight up the west coast of Africa, Lady Bailey used one that she had cut out of a cruise ship brochure. Aspy Engineer and his friend RN Chawla used a school atlas to get them from Cairo to Croydon. It is hardly surprising to learn that they landed 80 miles from Paris in bad weather on what was supposed to be the penultimate leg of their flight. Nor is it surprising that they should have landed in Norfolk instead of at Croydon on what was in fact their penultimate leg. What is astonishing, however, is that when he flew himself successfully back to Karachi to win the Aga Khan Trophy for being the first Indian national to fly solo between the two countries in under a month, Aspy Engineer was just 17. Truthfully, de Havilland's dream of flying for everyman was only fulfilled when he designed the Comet, the world's first jet airliner in the late 1940s. But the Moth was an important step along the way. What is clear is that, collectively, these exploits in the Moth showed that flying could actually be safe, and, at least potentially, open to all. In doing so, they sealed the reputation of Captain de Havilland's Moth as being one of the most successful, and certainly the most iconic, light aircraft of all time. by Alexander Norman (Abacus, £25) will be published on Feb 6
