Amy Johnson

Amy Johnson was the daughter of a fish merchant in Hull. She took a degree in economics at Sheffield, moved to London and worked as a typist in a solicitor's office, bored and unhappy after the end of a long relationship. In 1928 she took a bus to Stag Lane aerodrome and began flying lessons at the London Aeroplane Club, paying for them out of her wages. Her instructor thought she was not a natural pilot. She also spent evenings in the hangars learning to strip engines, and became the first woman in Britain to qualify as a ground engineer.

Within a year of getting her licence she decided to fly to Australia alone. Her father and the oil magnate Lord Wakefield helped her buy a used de Havilland Gipsy Moth, which she named Jason. She had never flown further than Hull. On 5 May 1930 she took off from Croydon with about a hundred hours in her logbook.

She crossed deserts and monsoon storms, made a forced landing in the Iraqi desert, damaged a wing landing at Rangoon, mended it with shirts and sticking plaster, and reached Darwin on 24 May. She had missed the record, but no woman had done it before, and Britain went wild for her. Songs were written; crowds mobbed her at every airfield.

She married the aviator Jim Mollison, set more records, and divorced him. In the Second World War she joined the Air Transport Auxiliary ferrying aircraft. On 5 January 1941, off course in bad weather, she bailed out over the Thames Estuary and was lost in the freezing water. Her body was never found.