People & Events
Amy Johnson (1903 - 1941)
On May 24, 1930, Amy Johnson, a young British pilot from Hull, touched
down in Darwin, Australia. She had just completed an 8,600-mile journey alone
in a two-year-old de Havilland Moth she had named Jason. The journey had taken
her 19 1/2 days. The press and public were ecstatic. The "Daily Mail" awarded
her [sterling]10,000, "the largest amount ever paid for a feat of daring." The
King and Queen of England, the British prime minister, and Charles Lindbergh
were among the many dignitaries who sent her congratulatory wishes. And she
was met wherever she went by scores of admiring fans. But the young aviator,
the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia, felt like a failure.
She'd set out to break the record time for the trip, set by the Australian
pilot, Bert Hinkler in 1928. Hinkler had made the solo flight from England to
Australia in 15 days; Johnson had taken four days longer. Although Johnson
had been planning to fly herself back to Europe, the stress of her public
appearances and the degree of her disappointment overwhelmed her. She returned
home on a commercial flight.
Johnson had learned to fly in 1928 at the London Aeroplane Club. Her first
instructor told her she would never become an aviator. And in fact it did take
her 16 hours of dual flying -- twice as long as was typical -- before she would
take her first solo flight. She finally earned her first pilot's license in
July of 1929. Later that year, after demonstrating an unusual interest for a
female aviator of that time in the mechanics of flying, she became the first
British woman to qualify as a ground engineer.
In early 1930, Johnson determined to challenge -- and break -- Hinkler's
record. She won the financial backing of a member of the British aristocracy,
Lord Wakefield, and with only 75 hours of flying time she set off from Croydon
in South London on May 5, 1930. Later, Johnson would remark that she had the
audacity to undertake the journey because she didn't really know what she was
getting herself into. "The prospect did not frighten me, because I was so
appallingly ignorant that I never realised in the least what I had taken on."
On the fourth day a sandstorm forced her to land and she spent several hours
clutching her gun, fearing that the desert dogs she could hear barking in the
distance were about to rip her to shreds. Several days later, after leaving
Karachi in what is now Pakistan, she realized she didn't have enough fuel to
get her to her next stop, so she made an unscheduled landing that sent military
men scurrying from a parade ground. Johnson flew through monsoon rains and in
blistering heat. Along the way, she made several crash landings that caused
delays while improvised repairs were made to her plane. And at one point,
after making an unplanned stop in an Indonesian village, she was reported
missing.
Perhaps not achieving her record-breaking goal made Johnson all the more
determined to attempt other long-distance flying feats. In January 1931 she
attempted to fly across Siberia to China, but gave up at the end of the month,
crash-landing near Warsaw. In 1932 she beat by eleven hours the record speed
for the London to Cape Town journey set earlier by her new husband, Jim
Mollison. The following year the newly-weds undertook a joint flying mission:
The two took off from Wales for New York. Ignoring his wife's advice, Mollison
refused to refuel in Boston. They ran out of gas over an airstrip in
Connecticut and the couple overshot the runway trying to land their plane in
the dark. They both ended up in a hospital. When American aviator Amelia
Earhart heard about the accident she invited them to stay at her house while
they recovered.
After Germany invaded Poland, Johnson was called on to contribute to the war
effort. The Royal Air Force invited her to join the newly established Air
Transport Auxiliary, which was ferrying aircraft from factories to air bases.
Ironically, Johnson would be the first to die though she was one of the most
experienced aviators to join the ATA. In January 1941, one headline read, "AMY
JOHNSON BALES OUT, MISSING." Johnson had been on a routine mission, flying a
plane from Prestwick to Kidlington, at the time of the crash. Eyewitnesses
reported seeing Johnson's plane plummet into the Thames Estuary, way off its
designated course. Her body was never found.
Johnson had taken off in weather conditions that would have deterred a more
cautious pilot. But her commanding officer Pauline Gower, who headed the
women's section of the ATA, defended Johnson's record saying that the aviator
would never had done anything reckless or unwise. Given Johnson's years as a
record-breaking, long-distance flyer who had frequently taken unnecessary
risks, Gower's statement was plainly not true. On the other hand, it was
probably in tune with popular sentiment; for many Britons, the pioneering
aviator from Yorkshire was an inspiration and would forever remain their
"Wonderful Amy."
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