🇬🇧 WWII uncovered: Pauline Gower Fahie: Founder of the Women's Section of the Air Transport Auxiliary.

 🇬🇧 WWII uncovered: Pauline Gower Fahie: Founder of the Women's Section of the Air Transport Auxiliary.


On 4 August 1930 Pauline Gower was the third woman in the world to obtain her commercial pilot's 'B' licence.

According to the Imperial War Museum: "By 1938 Pauline Gower was a much respected figure in aviation circles, not only had she flown more than 2,000 hours and carried upward of 30,000 passengers, but had been given many honours, including an MBE and appointment to several commissions into air safety.

 She was Commissioner of the Civil Air Guard, and was appointed to the board of the British Overseas Airways Corporation."

"The first eight female pilots of the ATA were recruited in late 1939 by Commander Pauline Gower MBE, who had been given the task of organizing and training the womens' section of the ATA. 

Eventually there were 166 women pilots who served in the ATA many of which hailed from overseas.

 During the war, 15 of the female pilots lost their lives including Amy Johnson aviatrix and pioneering pilot. Amy's husband Jim Mollinson also served as an ATA pilot.

 Female ATA pilots at first were only allowed to fly light training aircraft, but soon, as a result of Pauline Gower's initiative, progressed to high performance fighters, Spitfire, Hurricane, Typhoon etc, and then later to the medium twin engined bombers, and later still the heavy four engined bombers Halifax, Stirling, Lancaster. 

They flew everything but sea planes.ATA female pilots were later given equal pay, by a grateful British Government, one of the first examples of equal pay." (IWM)

"On 1 January 1940, the ATA accepted the "First Eight" into service: Winifred Crossley, Margaret Cunnison, Margaret Fairweather, Mona Friedlander, Joan Hughes (the youngest, at 21), Gabrielle Patterson, Rosemary Rees, and Marion Wilberforce.

 All these women were highly experienced, each having more than 600 hours of flying time, and seven were rated flying instructors. Pauline, at 29, was younger than most of the women she commanded.

 Yet she was a natural leader, and capably shouldered the responsibilities of her office." (Women in Aviation)

Pauline Gower married Wing Commander Bill Fahie in 1945. Pauline died during childbirth on 2 March 1947 at the age of 36 years old.

 She lies in rest at Kent and Sussex Cemetery in Tunbridge Wells Borough, Kent. Lest We Forget.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS:US Army Master Sergeant Roddie Edmond.

Image
 RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS:US Army Master Sergeant Roddie Edmond. Here is America's only soldier to ever receive Israel’s highest honor conferred on non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.  77 years ago, facing the threat of immediate execution, he and his men displayed an act of courage and character that exemplifies what it means to take a stand against evil. US Army Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, 422nd Infantry Regiment, 106th Infantry Division, the “Golden Lions”, was captured by German forces at the onset of the Battle of the Bulge.  A native of Knoxville, TN, Edmonds was 25 years old. He had only been on the front line for five days when his unit was overrun. Edmonds' captors marched him east where he was transferred to Stalag IX-A, a camp for enlisted personnel just east of Bonn, Germany.  As the senior noncommissioned officer at the camp, Edmonds found himself responsible for 1,275 American POWs. On January 27, 1945, the Camp Com...
Read more

🇺🇲 WWII uncovered: Three War Veteran: Colonel Ed McMahon of the US Marine Corps:

Image
 🇺🇲 WWII uncovered: Three War Veteran: Colonel Ed McMahon of the US Marine Corps: You may remember his signature line - "Heeeere's Johnny!! For nearly 30 years Ed McMahon was the co-host of the popular television series "The Tonight Show" with fellow World War II veteran Johnny Carson. While Johnny served in the Navy - Ed served with the US Marine Corps.  McMahon served with the Marines during World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. According to the US Department of Defense: "In 1944, Ed McMahon was commissioned in the Marine Corps and earned his pilot's wings.  He became a Marine Corps test pilot and a flight instructor in F4U Corsair aircraft at Lee Field, in Green Cove Springs, Florida." "McMahon remained in the Marine Corps Reserve after the war and was recalled to active duty during the Korean War.  He was awarded six Air Medals for flying 85 combat missions over North Korea in an OE-1 unarmed observation aircraft." "Afte...
Read more

On this day in 1944, the Battle of the Bulge Four German soldiers and three American soldiers shared a cottage:

Image
 On this day in 1944, the Battle of the Bulge Four German soldiers and three American soldiers shared a cottage: The Battle of Bulge is interrupted by a little-known truce deep in the Ardennes Forest. Four German soldiers and three American soldiers shared a cottage and a Christmas Eve meal, thanks to the bravery of one German woman. “It is the Holy Night and there will be no shooting here,” she reportedly told them. Elisabeth Vincken and her 12-year-old son, Fritz, had been staying in the cottage near the German-Belgian border.  They were looking for safety, but now the Battle of the Bulge was raging all around them. On Christmas Eve, they heard an unexpected knock on their door. They were scared, of course. Who could it be? Elisabeth carefully opened the door, only to find two men and another lying wounded in the snow.  They were American soldiers—not something Elisabeth would have wanted to find! The penalty for harboring Americans was death. But the Americans didn’t t...
Read more

The Terrible Story Of Mildred Harnack was beheaded on Hitler’s direct order.

Image
 The Terrible Story Of Mildred Harnack was beheaded on Hitler’s direct order.   Born in Milwaukee, she was 26 when she moved to Germany to pursue a PhD.  As an American grad student in Berlin, she saw Germany swiftly progress from democracy to fascist dictatorship.  She and her husband Arvid began holding secret meetings in their apartment.  She recruited working-class Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution. "Mildred Harnack nicknamed their resistance group “the Circle.” The group was diverse: its members were Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, atheist.  They were factory workers and office workers, students and professors, journalists and artists. Over 40% were women. "The Gestapo arrested Mildred Harnack on Sept 7, 1942 and gave her group a name: the Rote Kapelle (Red Orchestra).  Postwar testimonies and notes smuggled out of a Berlin w...
Read more

Sad Story Of African Powerful President Who Was Killed On Live TV Broadcasting.

Image
Sad Story Of African Powerful President Who Was Killed On Live TV Broadcasting. What makes watching a video of someone’s last moments different from reading about their murder? There is always something profound and heartbreaking about a dying person, no matter how many mistakes or sins they have made. We examine Mohammed Anwar el Sadat’s terrible murder in light of the aforementioned.As president of Egypt , Mohammed Anwar el Sadat was the one who was most closely guarded. In any case, he was guarded by at least four layers of security, including a group in charge of robbing the military during a parade of its armaments. But tragic events made him vulnerable, which led to his murder on October 6, 1981.The war between his country and Israel was ended by the Camp David Accords, which Sadat had signed three years earlier.  As a result, he infuriated his neighbors, who promptly removed Egypt from the Arab League. His crackdowns on Islamist organizations did not help, and he also aliena...
Read more

A teacher once gave her fifth-grade class an assignment... Get their parents to tell them a story with a moral at the end of it.

Image
A teacher once  gave her fifth-grade class an assignment... Get their parents to tell them a story with a moral at the end of it. The next day the kids came back and one by one began to tell their stories. Ashley said, "My father's a farmer and we have a lot of egg-laying hens. One time we were taking our eggs to market in a basket on the front seat of the car when we hit a big bump in the road an...d all the eggs went flying and broke and made a mess." "What's the moral of the story?" asked the teacher. "Don't put all your eggs in one basket!" "Very good," said the teacher. Next little Sarah raised her hand and said, "Our family are farmers too. But we raise chickens for the meat market. We had a dozen eggs one time, but when they hatched we only got ten live chicks, and the moral to this story is, "don't count your chickens before they're hatched." "That was a fine story Sarah. Michael, do you have a stor...
Read more

THE TERRIBLE ATTACKS OF Capt. F. I. "Ike" Fenton.

Image
THE TERRIBLE ATTACKS OF Capt. F. I. "Ike" Fenton. In hilly terrain near Pusan, South Korea, Capt. F. I. "Ike" Fenton of the U.S. Marines hears more bad news.  It is August 1950, and his company has been fighting all night. More than half of his 190 men are wounded or killed.  They are out of ammunition. He has lost radio contact with his superiors. And now, he is told, his first sergeant is mortally wounded. U.S. Marines had been in Korea barely two weeks when the 27-year-old Fenton, who had fought in World War II, is plunged into a critical battle. In June, the North Korean Army crosses the 38th Parallel into South Korea.  After the United Nations Security Council votes to authorize force to repel the surprise invasion, U.N., South Korean and U.S. troops establish a 150-mile-long defensive perimeter around Pusan, a port on the southeastern coast. Fenton’s company is sent into a breach in the perimeter and ordered to "hold at all cost," lest the attacking ...
Read more

On August 23, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression pact, stunning the world, given their diametrically opposed ideologies.

Image
On August 23, 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union sign a non-aggression pact, stunning the world, given their diametrically opposed ideologies. But the dictators were, despite appearances, both playing to their own political needs. After Nazi Germany’s invasion of Czechoslovakia, Britain had to decide to what extent it would intervene should Hitler continue German expansion. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, at first indifferent to Hitler’s capture of the Sudetenland, the German-speaking area of Czechoslovakia, suddenly snapped to life when Poland became threatened. He made it plain that Britain would be obliged to come to the aid of Poland in the event of German invasion. But he wanted, and needed, an ally. The only power large enough to stop Hitler, and with a vested interest in doing so, was the Soviet Union. But Stalin was cool to Britain after its effort to create a political alliance with Britain and France against Germany had been rebuffed a year earlier. 9 Plus, Polan...
Read more

🇬🇧WWII uncovered: Honouring the Service of Charlotte 'Betty' Webb: Code Breaker of Bletchley Park and the Pacific Theater.

Image
 🇬🇧WWII uncovered: Honouring the Service of Charlotte 'Betty' Webb: Code Breaker of Bletchley Park and the Pacific Theater. Bletchley Park, a British government cryptological establishment in operation during World War II remained classified even after the end of the war.  The establishment was where Alan Turing and other agents of the Ultra intelligence project decoded the enemy’s secret messages, most notably those that had been encrypted with the German Enigma and Tunny Cipher machines. The world would not fully learn of the valuable efforts put forth by approximately 12,000 men and women until 1974 when Frederick William Winterbotham received permission to publish his memoir, "The Ultra Secret. At the age of 18 years old Charlotte 'Betty' Webb was serving with the Auxiliary Territorial Service when her extensive knowledge of the German language prompted interviewers to reassign her to Bletchley Park. "I didn't really think of myself as being one of t...
Read more

The terrible Story of Joy Lofhthouse.

Image
Joy Lofthouse (14 February 1923 – 15 November 2017)  was a British pilot having joined the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) as an ab initio pilot in December 1943.  She went on to fly Spitfires and bombers for the Air Transport Auxiliary, and was one of only 168 "Attagirls" who served In 1943, 20-year-old Lofthouse and her elder sister Yvonne joined the Air Transport Auxiliary, after they saw an ad in a magazine which was seeking women to learn how to fly.  Only 17 out of 2,000 applicants were accepted, including Joy, who had never even driven a car, and Yvonne. She was one of a total of 168 women who were members of the Air Transport Auxiliary.  Her job was to deliver aircraft from the factories where they were made to the airfields where they were to be flown from by Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots.  Lofthouse was able to fly 38 different types of aircraft. During the war, they were based at White Waltham, in Berkshire. After World War II, she became a teacher....
Read more