Biography

February 2, 1917 · Leafield, Oxfordshire, England, UK

July 24, 2018 · Sandown, Isle of Wight, England, UK

Mary Wilkins

5′ 2″ (1.57 m)

Member of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), she piloted Spitfires and bombers of 76 different types of airplanes. She was manager of Isle of Wight Sandown Airport.

She grew up on a farm in Oxfordshire, near RAF bases at Bicester and Port Meadow. Her father paid a flying circus to take her on a short flight in a de Havilland biplane. As a teenager, she took flying lessons. When WWII broke out, she qualified for the Air Transport Auxiliary, which allowed women pilots to join starting in 1940.

When the ATA was disbanded in 1945, she was seconded to the RAF, where she became one of the first women to fly Britain's first jet fighter, the Gloster Meteor.

She passed away nine days after the release of Spitfire (2018), in which she was featured.

They actually went inside the aeroplane and searched it. Everybody was flabbergasted that a little girl like me could fly these big aeroplanes all by oneself. [At an RAF base, the ground crew refused to believe she was the pilot of the Wellington bomber she had just landed]