NAMESTO REMEMBER Amy Johnson (1903-1941) was a pioneering British aviator

"The silence," she wrote in an article on gliding, "broken only by the soft swish of the wind in my hair, is rapture after the deafening roar to which I have been accustomed for so many years."

- ATHOL FRANZ

Amy Johnson CBE (1 July 1903 – disappeared 5 January 1941) was a pioneering English pilot who was the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia. Flying solo or with her husband, Jim Mollison, she set many long-distance records during the 1930s. She flew in the Second World War as a part of the Air Transport Auxiliary and disappeared during a ferry flight. The cause of her death has been a subject of discussion over many years.

Early life

Born in 1903 in Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, Amy Johnson was the daughter of Amy Hodge, granddaughter of William Hodge, a Mayor of Hull and John William Johnson whose family were fish merchants in the firm of Andrew Johnson, Knudtzon and Company. She was the eldest of three sisters, the next in age being Irene who was a year younger.

Johnson 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 then worked in London as secretary to a solicitor, William Charles Crocker. She was introduced to flying as a hobby, gaining an aviator’s certificate, No. 8662, on 28 January 1929 and a pilot’s ‘A’ Licence, No. 1979, on 6 July 1929, both at the London Aeroplane Club under the tutelage of Captain Valentine Baker. In that same year, she became the first British woman to obtain a ground engineer’s ‘C’ licence.

Solo from England to Australia