A sweet shot!
Girls and Aircraft - Volume II
- Thread starter Matt308
- Start date
Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules
- Status
johnbr
2nd Lieutenant
johnbr
2nd Lieutenant
johnbr
2nd Lieutenant
johnbr
2nd Lieutenant
In 1939 Amy Johnson was routinely flying across the Solent acting as target for searchlight batteries and anti-aircraft gunners to draw attention away from the combat pilots.
She was killed in January 1941, when her plane ran out of fuel in thick fog and she baled out over the Thames estuary. She landed safely, but got lost in the water and drowned.
But there were many other dangers. Scandalously, one woman's aircraft was even thought to have been sabotaged by male rivals, threatened by the sight of attractive, young and physically slight women emerging from the cockpits of huge heavy bombers.
"Women are not doing this job for the sake of doing something for their country," declared one outraged male authority figure.
"Women who want to serve their country should take on work more befitting their sex instead of encroaching on a man's occupation. Men have made aviation reach its present perfection."
Sometimes danger came from the sheer unfamiliarity with the planes they were flying - there were 143 different types and often the pilots had a mere half-hour with the handbook before taking off.
More usually it came in the guise of the weather. For the most part, these pioneer women were flying in open cockpits without instruments and without radar and when, like Johnson, they were engulfed with cloud, they had little hope of finding their way to land safely.
There were some terrible nearmisses. One January morning in 1943, Diana Barnato Walker was flying over the Cotswolds when the clear blue sky suddenly filled with cloud more than 6,000 ft thick.
As her plane started losing height, Barnato, then 25, desperately peered through the clouds trying to find a place to land.
She finally broke through at treetop height and banked sharply to avoid a patch of woodland. Improbably she recovered to make a perfect landing in heavy rain on a grass airstrip at RAF Windrush.
Read more: Silk stocking and Spitfires: The dark reality of the girls who flew dangerous wartime missions | Daily Mail Online
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
She was killed in January 1941, when her plane ran out of fuel in thick fog and she baled out over the Thames estuary. She landed safely, but got lost in the water and drowned.
But there were many other dangers. Scandalously, one woman's aircraft was even thought to have been sabotaged by male rivals, threatened by the sight of attractive, young and physically slight women emerging from the cockpits of huge heavy bombers.
"Women are not doing this job for the sake of doing something for their country," declared one outraged male authority figure.
"Women who want to serve their country should take on work more befitting their sex instead of encroaching on a man's occupation. Men have made aviation reach its present perfection."
Sometimes danger came from the sheer unfamiliarity with the planes they were flying - there were 143 different types and often the pilots had a mere half-hour with the handbook before taking off.
More usually it came in the guise of the weather. For the most part, these pioneer women were flying in open cockpits without instruments and without radar and when, like Johnson, they were engulfed with cloud, they had little hope of finding their way to land safely.
There were some terrible nearmisses. One January morning in 1943, Diana Barnato Walker was flying over the Cotswolds when the clear blue sky suddenly filled with cloud more than 6,000 ft thick.
As her plane started losing height, Barnato, then 25, desperately peered through the clouds trying to find a place to land.
She finally broke through at treetop height and banked sharply to avoid a patch of woodland. Improbably she recovered to make a perfect landing in heavy rain on a grass airstrip at RAF Windrush.
Read more: Silk stocking and Spitfires: The dark reality of the girls who flew dangerous wartime missions | Daily Mail Online
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Attachments
8)
Go Girls! 
johnbr
2nd Lieutenant
No sorry it did not say.
I believe it is the same French artist that made the girl sitting on the Corsair in #940. I have his name at work. If I remember I will let you know amigo.
at6
1st Sergeant
Nothing better than three hotties except four or more.
8)
Romain Hugault is the artists name.
Crimea_River
Marshal
The girl's nice but I hate what they did to the colour of the plane.
Thank you!
- Status
