Friday Gratitude #4 The Trail Blazers

Yesterday one of the last surviving Spitfire pilots, died aged 101. By the end of the war, the pilot had flown 400 Spitfires, 47 Wellington Bombers, 76 types of aircraft in total including Hurricanes and the American P-51 Mustang Fighters. This pilot was Mary Ellis who with her colleagues blazed a trail (a vapour trail maybe) in advancing what women are deemed capable of.

 

She was a member of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) a civilian group, who were responsible for getting aircraft from the factory to the airfield, during the Second World war. With a high proportion of women in the role, they became known as the ATA girls; one in ten would be killed in action during their service.

 

Along with her peers, Mary had to overcome much prejudice in her professional capacity as many men believed women incapable of flying aircraft. As she related in a recent interview, at one RAF base, the crew actually searched the plane to ‘look for the pilot’ not believing for a moment that a girl could possibly fly a plane. Obviously they came out astounded, but with new found respect, since the pilot was, as stated, already in front of them, in lipstick and nail varnish.

 

There would be other harder nuts to crack.

In a 1940 editorial, The Aeroplane magazine fumed “Women anxious to serve their country should take on work more befitting their sex instead of encroaching on a man’s occupation.”

In another publication the editor wrote: “The menace is the woman who thinks that she ought to be flying in a high-speed bomber when she really has not the intelligence to scrub the floor of a hospital properly.”

 

Needless to say, Mary and the other ATA Girls, proved them wrong.

 

Today I am grateful to all the trail blazers, to those who through their own courage and determination, have made it a little easier for those of us who follow in their path.

 

 

In memory of Mary Ellis, who died yesterday.