Obituaries
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Sadly, another of "The Few" has passed.
Youngest Battle of Britain RAF pilot dies
Youngest Battle of Britain RAF pilot dies
at6
1st Sergeant
Another hero gone. My condolences to his family and may he rest in peace.
buffnut453
Captain
Had the privilege of meeting Geoffrey Wellum many moons ago at Duxford. He signed my copy of "First Light" which is, IMHO, among the very best flying memoirs. His writing was both vivid and passionate, and I've yet to find a better book describing what it was like to be a young fighter pilot in 1940.
Fair winds Geoffrey. You were an absolute gentlemen and will never be forgotten.
Fair winds Geoffrey. You were an absolute gentlemen and will never be forgotten.
Ascent
Senior Airman
It's just been reported in the news that Mary Ellis, last of the surviving female ATA pilots has passed away at the grand age of 101, one year older than the RAF.
Obituary: Mary Ellis the air pioneer
A really amazing woman.
Obituary: Mary Ellis the air pioneer
A really amazing woman.
Mary Wilkins Ellis- ATA Association Commodore and First Officer 'Spitfire Girl'. :salutepilot:
The last of the Spitfire girls Mary Ellis, who flew 76 different aircraft during the Second World War, has died at her home on the Isle of Wight aged 101.
The Oxfordshire native died in Sandown on Tuesday, and was one of the two last surviving UK female Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) pilots.
Mrs Ellis flew 400 Spitfires and 76 different types of aircraft during WWII, and just before her 100th birthday she was able to fly once more in a Spitfire.
Just two weeks ago, Mrs Ellis attended the London premiere of Spitfires, where she was seen smiling on the red carpet and received a standing ovation after the film. Mrs Ellis took her first flying lesson as a teenager and flew for pleasure until 1939 when she heard a radio appeal for women pilots to join the auxiliary service. As news broke of her death, people took to social media to pay tribute to the legendary woman and to thank her for her service.
John Nichol, a former prisoner-of-war and author, wrote: 'Another giant leaves us to john her heroic friends in Blue Skies. Rest in peace Mary; you truly deserve it. Thank you.'
Twitter user Mike said: 'More awful news. RIP Mary Ellis. A legend of the Air Transport Auxiliary. Over 1000 aircraft; 76 different types and over 400 Spitfires alone. I hope you're enjoying a well-earned sherry up there with Joy Lofthouse again. Blue skies Ma'am #LestWeForget.' Kevin Powell added: 'I saw Mary Ellis interviewed recently. Her selflessness and belief that she had a duty to do all she did for the greater good shone through. A Truly inspirational lady who achieved so much for Britain.' Melody Foreman, author of A Spitfire Girl, described Mrs Ellis as 'one of the world's greatest female ferry pilots'. She wrote: 'Mary helped the war effort by delivering much needed aircraft including Wellington Bombers, Mustangs and many more to the aircrews of RAF fighter and bomber command squadrons.'
'She flew 400 Spitfires and maintains that it is her favourite aircraft of all time. It is a symbol of freedom and liberty,' said Ms Foreman.
'When the ATA was closed in November 1945, Mary was seconded to the RAF to fly the new Meteor fast jet.
'The next few years saw her working as a personal pilot to a wealthy businessman and by 1950 she became the boss of Sandown Airport on the Isle of Wight.
'Mary became Europe's first female air commandant and remained as managing director of Sandown until 1970.
'[She] heard an appeal on the radio from the BBC for women pilots needed to help the war effort,'
'She joined the Air Transport Auxiliary, an organisation which ferried aircraft from factories and maintenance units to RAF airfields all over Britain.'
When Mrs Ellis turned a century old, a surprise party was held in her honour at Sandown Airport, where more than 60 guests attended.
Mrs Ellis said at the event: 'The war was a challenge and one had to do something about it. I went on and on until I flew everything. I love the Spitfire – it's my favourite aircraft, it's everyone's favourite, it's the symbol of freedom.'
Then as part of her celebrations, Mrs Ellis was handed the controls of a 275mph twin-seater Spitfire as it swooped over West Sussex.
After about 15 minutes, she turned for home, and told her co-pilot Matt Jones: 'Goodwood on the nose, you have control…'. Then she settled back to enjoy the ride back to base.
Earlier that day, Mrs Ellis watched in delight as Spitfire MV154 took its place beside her in an extraordinary airborne tribute. It was a plane she had delivered to RAF Brize Norton from Southampton on September 15, 1944, and it hides a sentimental secret.
For at the end of the 25-minute wartime flight, she signed the cockpit, scrawling her maiden name Wilkins and the initials ATA.
Mary died yesterday (Tuesday 24th July) in Sandown…
source: Dailymail
The last of the Spitfire girls Mary Ellis, who flew 76 different aircraft during the Second World War, has died at her home on the Isle of Wight aged 101.
The Oxfordshire native died in Sandown on Tuesday, and was one of the two last surviving UK female Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) pilots.
Mrs Ellis flew 400 Spitfires and 76 different types of aircraft during WWII, and just before her 100th birthday she was able to fly once more in a Spitfire.
Just two weeks ago, Mrs Ellis attended the London premiere of Spitfires, where she was seen smiling on the red carpet and received a standing ovation after the film. Mrs Ellis took her first flying lesson as a teenager and flew for pleasure until 1939 when she heard a radio appeal for women pilots to join the auxiliary service. As news broke of her death, people took to social media to pay tribute to the legendary woman and to thank her for her service.
John Nichol, a former prisoner-of-war and author, wrote: 'Another giant leaves us to john her heroic friends in Blue Skies. Rest in peace Mary; you truly deserve it. Thank you.'
Twitter user Mike said: 'More awful news. RIP Mary Ellis. A legend of the Air Transport Auxiliary. Over 1000 aircraft; 76 different types and over 400 Spitfires alone. I hope you're enjoying a well-earned sherry up there with Joy Lofthouse again. Blue skies Ma'am #LestWeForget.' Kevin Powell added: 'I saw Mary Ellis interviewed recently. Her selflessness and belief that she had a duty to do all she did for the greater good shone through. A Truly inspirational lady who achieved so much for Britain.' Melody Foreman, author of A Spitfire Girl, described Mrs Ellis as 'one of the world's greatest female ferry pilots'. She wrote: 'Mary helped the war effort by delivering much needed aircraft including Wellington Bombers, Mustangs and many more to the aircrews of RAF fighter and bomber command squadrons.'
'She flew 400 Spitfires and maintains that it is her favourite aircraft of all time. It is a symbol of freedom and liberty,' said Ms Foreman.
'When the ATA was closed in November 1945, Mary was seconded to the RAF to fly the new Meteor fast jet.
'The next few years saw her working as a personal pilot to a wealthy businessman and by 1950 she became the boss of Sandown Airport on the Isle of Wight.
'Mary became Europe's first female air commandant and remained as managing director of Sandown until 1970.
'[She] heard an appeal on the radio from the BBC for women pilots needed to help the war effort,'
'She joined the Air Transport Auxiliary, an organisation which ferried aircraft from factories and maintenance units to RAF airfields all over Britain.'
When Mrs Ellis turned a century old, a surprise party was held in her honour at Sandown Airport, where more than 60 guests attended.
Mrs Ellis said at the event: 'The war was a challenge and one had to do something about it. I went on and on until I flew everything. I love the Spitfire – it's my favourite aircraft, it's everyone's favourite, it's the symbol of freedom.'
Then as part of her celebrations, Mrs Ellis was handed the controls of a 275mph twin-seater Spitfire as it swooped over West Sussex.
After about 15 minutes, she turned for home, and told her co-pilot Matt Jones: 'Goodwood on the nose, you have control…'. Then she settled back to enjoy the ride back to base.
Earlier that day, Mrs Ellis watched in delight as Spitfire MV154 took its place beside her in an extraordinary airborne tribute. It was a plane she had delivered to RAF Brize Norton from Southampton on September 15, 1944, and it hides a sentimental secret.
For at the end of the 25-minute wartime flight, she signed the cockpit, scrawling her maiden name Wilkins and the initials ATA.
Mary died yesterday (Tuesday 24th July) in Sandown…
source: Dailymail
buffnut453
Captain
Agreed. A remarkable lady. Perhaps she and Geoffrey Wellum can share a few war stories over a heavenly beer!
vikingBerserker
Lieutenant General
Michael Lapage 
Michael Lapage, who has died aged 94, served in World War II as a Fleet Air Arm pilot, won a silver medal as a rower in the 1948 Olympic Games in London and went on to become a Christian missionary in Kenya.
Michael Clement Lapage was the son of a vicar from Dorset, southwest England. He won a place at Selwyn College, Cambridge, to read geography but his ambition of making the university boat team was put on hold by the war. After training, he joined 807 Naval Air Squadron in 1944, flying the Seafire, a navalised version of the Spitfire. Its undercarriage was too weak for deck landings, and on six occasions he suffered damage or bounced into, over or through the flight deck barrier. He flew reconnaissance and air-to-ground strafing missions during the Allied landings in southern France, and on one occasion was flying as wingman when his flight was told to investigate a ship off Marseille: they came under heavy fire and his No 1 was shot down. He was more successful flying the Grumman Hellcat, an American fighter specially designed for shipborne operations. Deployed to the Far East, in July 1945 he narrowly avoided being shot down during a patrol off the coast of Malaya. By the time he got to Selwyn College in 1946, he had missed the first term, and was thus ineligible for that year's Boat Race crew. He was somewhat put out to discover that, unlike most university freshers, he was too old to qualify for the special provision in a time of rationing of bananas, which were available only from the college bursar's office for ''gentlemen under the age of 18''. It took him two years to establish himself in the Cambridge rowing crew. He rowed at seven in the team that won the 1948 Boat Race and which would form the main part of the Olympic team later the same year.
On Wednesday July 29, Lapage and his colleagues attended the ceremony at Wembley Stadium at which George VI declared the Games open. ''It was over in two hours flat and during which we sung the Hallelujah Chorus,'' he recalled. ''There was no dancing or anything. They released all the pigeons and we put our hats on in case we got hit.'' Apart from a free pair of underpants and malt drinks in the evenings, British athletes enjoyed little in the way of special treatment.
The rowing events were held on the Thames at Henley and the British eight, which had got together as a crew only a month or two earlier, had no great hopes of success. Yet they beat the Canadians in the semifinal, reached the final, against Norway and the United States, and led for the first 500 metres before the Americans pulled away. Lapage always wondered if rationing, which continued in Britain until 1953-54, might have had something to do with the British team's failure to win gold. Although crew members' butter ration was increased from two to four ounces a week, the big problem was lack of meat. ''We had about eight ounces,'' he recalled. ''I was about 13 stone and 6ft but height and weight can be a handicap if it is not used correctly. The Americans had more meat. It was imported every day from the States, which was vital because it is muscle-building. With rationing we just accepted it. We ate the best food that was available, and we managed with other things.'' But he recalled the Games as ''very amateur and pleasant'', and he enjoyed camaraderie and the riotous champagne and sherry-fuelled celebrations afterwards with the other crews. After the Olympics, Lapage resumed his studies at Cambridge then took up a teaching post at Winchester College, where he helped run the Scout troop and coached the school's first eight to victory in the Schools' Head of the River Race and in the Princess Elizabeth Cup at Henley.
In 1950 Lapage's Great Britain rowing team travelled to Australia and New Zealand for the Empire Games, the forerunner of the Commonwealth Games. ''Our boat got lost,'' he recalled. ''We had to borrow one and we won a bronze, which was a good effort.'' Even better, there was meat for every meal they had: ''For breakfast, we had steak with an egg on the top.''
Lapage's evangelical upbringing, and the experience of nearly being shot down in 1945, eventually convinced him that he had been ''saved to serve'', and in the late 1950s he went out to Kenya, where he served as a schools inspector during the Mau Mau uprising. He was ordained in Kenya in 1961.
In 2012 he carried the Olympic torch in the relay for the 2012 Games, in St Austell, Cornwall. The same year he joined the crew of 18 former Olympic oarsmen who rowed the barge Gloriana when it stole the show at the Henley Regatta.
In 1953 he married Margaret Butcher, the daughter of a missionary. She died in 1995 and he is survived by two daughters and a son.
source: The Telegraph
Michael Lapage, who has died aged 94, served in World War II as a Fleet Air Arm pilot, won a silver medal as a rower in the 1948 Olympic Games in London and went on to become a Christian missionary in Kenya.
Michael Clement Lapage was the son of a vicar from Dorset, southwest England. He won a place at Selwyn College, Cambridge, to read geography but his ambition of making the university boat team was put on hold by the war. After training, he joined 807 Naval Air Squadron in 1944, flying the Seafire, a navalised version of the Spitfire. Its undercarriage was too weak for deck landings, and on six occasions he suffered damage or bounced into, over or through the flight deck barrier. He flew reconnaissance and air-to-ground strafing missions during the Allied landings in southern France, and on one occasion was flying as wingman when his flight was told to investigate a ship off Marseille: they came under heavy fire and his No 1 was shot down. He was more successful flying the Grumman Hellcat, an American fighter specially designed for shipborne operations. Deployed to the Far East, in July 1945 he narrowly avoided being shot down during a patrol off the coast of Malaya. By the time he got to Selwyn College in 1946, he had missed the first term, and was thus ineligible for that year's Boat Race crew. He was somewhat put out to discover that, unlike most university freshers, he was too old to qualify for the special provision in a time of rationing of bananas, which were available only from the college bursar's office for ''gentlemen under the age of 18''. It took him two years to establish himself in the Cambridge rowing crew. He rowed at seven in the team that won the 1948 Boat Race and which would form the main part of the Olympic team later the same year.
On Wednesday July 29, Lapage and his colleagues attended the ceremony at Wembley Stadium at which George VI declared the Games open. ''It was over in two hours flat and during which we sung the Hallelujah Chorus,'' he recalled. ''There was no dancing or anything. They released all the pigeons and we put our hats on in case we got hit.'' Apart from a free pair of underpants and malt drinks in the evenings, British athletes enjoyed little in the way of special treatment.
The rowing events were held on the Thames at Henley and the British eight, which had got together as a crew only a month or two earlier, had no great hopes of success. Yet they beat the Canadians in the semifinal, reached the final, against Norway and the United States, and led for the first 500 metres before the Americans pulled away. Lapage always wondered if rationing, which continued in Britain until 1953-54, might have had something to do with the British team's failure to win gold. Although crew members' butter ration was increased from two to four ounces a week, the big problem was lack of meat. ''We had about eight ounces,'' he recalled. ''I was about 13 stone and 6ft but height and weight can be a handicap if it is not used correctly. The Americans had more meat. It was imported every day from the States, which was vital because it is muscle-building. With rationing we just accepted it. We ate the best food that was available, and we managed with other things.'' But he recalled the Games as ''very amateur and pleasant'', and he enjoyed camaraderie and the riotous champagne and sherry-fuelled celebrations afterwards with the other crews. After the Olympics, Lapage resumed his studies at Cambridge then took up a teaching post at Winchester College, where he helped run the Scout troop and coached the school's first eight to victory in the Schools' Head of the River Race and in the Princess Elizabeth Cup at Henley.
In 1950 Lapage's Great Britain rowing team travelled to Australia and New Zealand for the Empire Games, the forerunner of the Commonwealth Games. ''Our boat got lost,'' he recalled. ''We had to borrow one and we won a bronze, which was a good effort.'' Even better, there was meat for every meal they had: ''For breakfast, we had steak with an egg on the top.''
Lapage's evangelical upbringing, and the experience of nearly being shot down in 1945, eventually convinced him that he had been ''saved to serve'', and in the late 1950s he went out to Kenya, where he served as a schools inspector during the Mau Mau uprising. He was ordained in Kenya in 1961.
In 2012 he carried the Olympic torch in the relay for the 2012 Games, in St Austell, Cornwall. The same year he joined the crew of 18 former Olympic oarsmen who rowed the barge Gloriana when it stole the show at the Henley Regatta.
In 1953 he married Margaret Butcher, the daughter of a missionary. She died in 1995 and he is survived by two daughters and a son.
source: The Telegraph
michaelmaltby
Colonel
New Zealand fighter pilot Alan Peart has passed away. He was 96.
Quoted from a colleague of mine from another forum:
From Colin Hanson's By Such Deeds – Honours and awards in the Royal New Zealand Air Force, 1923 – 1999 :
PEART, Flight Lieutenant Alan McGregor, DFC.
NZ412729 & 132746; Born Nelson, 25 Jul 1922, RNZAF 7 May 1941 to 7 Oct 1945, Res. to 25 Jul 1977; Pilot.
Citation Distinguished Flying Cross (2 Jun 1944): [81 Sqn RAF (Spitfire)] Flying Officer Peart is a keen and courageous fighter who has destroyed five enemy aircraft and damaged several more. He has taken part in a very large number of sorties and set a fine example of devotion to duty throughout.
WWII Fighter Ace. Credited with the destruction of 7 1/3 enemy aircraft, plus seven damaged, Post-war research suggests that two of those damaged may in fact have been destroyed. He served in Britain (on 610 Sqn), North Africa, Malta, Sicily, Italy, India and Burma, completing three tours of duty - two operational and one instructional. In Aug 1993, Flt Lt Peart recalled two occasions in which he faced high odds in the air. The first was over Bone, North Africa, when alone, he was faced with 12 Me 109Gs. The second occasion was over Burma when he and his Squadron Commander faced 20 Japanese 'Oscars' - his CO losing his life. His twin brother, Wg Cdr R Peart, served in the RNZAF as an Engineer.
News article from Radio New Zealand: World War II flying ace Alan Peart dies
I took these photos a few years back at a special meet where funds were raised to get Alan a flight in a two-seat Spitfire. That's former 485 (NZ) Sqn, RAF Spitfire pilot Jim Robinson at right.
Alan Peart 1
Alan Peart 2
RIP Alan.
(Mods, I was going to post this in the News pages, but apparently I have insufficient privileges to do so!)
Quoted from a colleague of mine from another forum:
From Colin Hanson's By Such Deeds – Honours and awards in the Royal New Zealand Air Force, 1923 – 1999 :
PEART, Flight Lieutenant Alan McGregor, DFC.
NZ412729 & 132746; Born Nelson, 25 Jul 1922, RNZAF 7 May 1941 to 7 Oct 1945, Res. to 25 Jul 1977; Pilot.
Citation Distinguished Flying Cross (2 Jun 1944): [81 Sqn RAF (Spitfire)] Flying Officer Peart is a keen and courageous fighter who has destroyed five enemy aircraft and damaged several more. He has taken part in a very large number of sorties and set a fine example of devotion to duty throughout.
WWII Fighter Ace. Credited with the destruction of 7 1/3 enemy aircraft, plus seven damaged, Post-war research suggests that two of those damaged may in fact have been destroyed. He served in Britain (on 610 Sqn), North Africa, Malta, Sicily, Italy, India and Burma, completing three tours of duty - two operational and one instructional. In Aug 1993, Flt Lt Peart recalled two occasions in which he faced high odds in the air. The first was over Bone, North Africa, when alone, he was faced with 12 Me 109Gs. The second occasion was over Burma when he and his Squadron Commander faced 20 Japanese 'Oscars' - his CO losing his life. His twin brother, Wg Cdr R Peart, served in the RNZAF as an Engineer.
News article from Radio New Zealand: World War II flying ace Alan Peart dies
I took these photos a few years back at a special meet where funds were raised to get Alan a flight in a two-seat Spitfire. That's former 485 (NZ) Sqn, RAF Spitfire pilot Jim Robinson at right.
RIP Alan.
(Mods, I was going to post this in the News pages, but apparently I have insufficient privileges to do so!)