Wonderful Amy Johnson Was The Queen Of The Air.

Amy Johnson

"Queen of the air"

Amy Johnson was born at 154 St George's Road in Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, England to Amy Hodge and John William Johnson, a member of the family fish merchants firm of Andrew Johnson, Knudtzon and Company. Amy was the eldest of the four daughters. 

She was educated at Boulevard Municipal Secondary School (later Kingston High School) and the University of Sheffield, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics. She moved on to work as a secretary to a London solicitor and became interested in flying. She was told by her first instructor that she'd never be a pilot, but in 1928 she proved them wrong when she gained an aviator's certificate and a pilot's license, both at the London Aeroplane Club. In that same year, she became the first British woman to obtain a ground engineer's licence.

Amy wanted to fly solo to Australia and to beat Bert Hinkler's record of 16 days. She obtained the funds for her first aircraft from her father and eventually won financial backing from Lord Wakefield. She purchased a second-hand de Havilland DH.60 Gipsy Moth G-AAAH and named it Jason after her father's business trade mark.

On May 5th, 1930, with only 75 hours of flying time Amy set off from Croydon in South London on her solo flight to Darwin. On the fourth day a sandstorm forced her to land and she spent several with her gun in hand and the desert dogs barking in the distance. 

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. Johnson flew through monsoon rains and in blistering heat and 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.

It was an epic flight of 11,000 miles.  She missed the record by three days, nevertheless she was the first woman to fly alone to Australia and was dubbed “Queen of the Air” by the British press.

Later, Amy remarked, "The prospect did not frighten me, because I was so appallingly ignorant that I never realized in the least what I had taken on."

In 1931, she and co-pilot Jack Humphreys became the first to fly from London to Moscow in one day. They completed the 1,760 miles  journey in approximately 21 hours in a de Havilland DH.80 Puss Moth G-AAZV which Amy named Jason II. From there, they continued across Siberia and on to Tokyo, setting a record time for Britain to Japan.

In 1932, Johnson married Scottish pilot Jim Mollison, who had proposed to her during a flight together some eight hours after they had first met. That year, she also broke the record for solo flight, which had been held by her new husband, to Cape Town, South Africa by 11 hours in Puss Moth G-ACAB, named Desert Cloud.

The following year the newly-weds undertook a joint flying mission non-stop from Wales for New York in a G-ACCV, de Havilland DH.84 Dragon I named "Seafarer." Ignoring his wife's advice, Mollison refused to refuel in Boston and headed to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. They ran out of gas over an airstrip in Connecticut, They overshot the runway trying to land their plane in the dark and crashed in a drainage ditch. Both were thrown from the aircraft but suffered only cuts and gashes. When Amelia Earhart heard about the accident she invited them to stay at her house while they recovered. After recuperating, the pair were feted by New York society and received a ticker tape parade down Wall Street.

The couple also flew, in record time, from Britain to India in 1934 in G-ACSP, named "Black Magic", a de Havilland DH.88 Comet as part of the Britain to Australia MacRobertson Air Race. They were forced to retire from the race at Allahabad because of engine trouble.

In May 1936, Amy made her last record-breaking flight, regaining her Britain to South Africa record in G-ADZO, a Percival Gull Six. The same year she was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Aero Club.

In 1938, Amy overturned her glider when landing after a display at Walsall Aerodrome in England, but was not seriously hurt. The same year, she divorced Mollison. Soon afterwards, she reverted to her maiden name.

In 1939, during the outbreak of World World II, the Royal Air Force invited her to join the newly established Air Transport Auxiliary, which was ferrying aircraft from factories to air bases. She rose to first officer.

On January 5th, 1941, had been on a routine mission, flying a  Airspeed Oxford from Prestwick to Kidlington when she went off course in adverse weather conditions. Reportedly out of fuel, she bailed out as her aircraft crashed into the Thames Estuary near Herne Bay. A convoy of wartime vessels spotted Amy's parachute coming down and saw her alive in the frigged water, calling for help. 

The weather was terrible and the tide was strong as the snow was falling as Lt Cmdr Walter Fletcher, the Captain of HMS Haslemere, navigated his ship to attempt a rescue. The crew of the vessel threw ropes out to Amy but she was unable to reach them and was lost under the ship. Some people believed that Amy was sucked into the blades of the ship's propellers, but no one witnessed this however and Amy was never seen again.

A memorial service was held for Amy in the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields on January 14th, 1941.

As a member of the ATA with no known grave, she is (under the name Amy V. Johnson) commemorated by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission on the Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede. 

During her life and after her death, Amy was honored in many ways. I will only mention of few of them since there are so many. A song was written about Amy called, Wonderful Amy.  From 1935 to 1937, Johnson was the President of the Women's Engineering Society. The British Women Pilot's Association award is an annual Amy Johnson Memorial Trust Scholarship to help outstanding women pilots further their careers.

In 1999, it was reported that Tom Mitchell, claimed to have shot sixteen rounds of shells Amy's aircraft down when she twice failed to give the correct identification code during the flight. Mitchell explained how the aircraft was sighted and contacted by radio. 

"We all thought it was an enemy plane until the next day when we read the papers and discovered it was Amy. The officers told us never to tell anyone what happened."