In 1953 Freydis Sharland, who has died aged 93, climbed into a 430mph Hawker Tempest V, and set off from an airfield in southern England on a 4,000-mile intercontinental flight. Her aeroplane was one of the biggest, and fastest, of the last generation of piston-engined RAF fighters, and her destination was Pakistan. Sharland's stopovers, an itinerary for the last days of empire, took in Nicosia, Baghdad where she was entranced by the almond trees and Bahrain, and then she undertook the final, and longest, leg to Karachi. Upon arrival, and having delivered the Tempest to the Pakistan Air Force, she was denied access to the officer's mess. She was, after all, a woman.
That epic was her longest flight, and her first outside Britain. But by then, Sharland was well established as a formidable flyer. She was one of more than 160 women who flew for the wartime Air Transport Auxiliary. Between 1939 and 1945, more than 1,300 ATA pilots delivered warplanes between factories, facilities and bases across Britain, and, later, into mainland Europe and the Mediterranean. In January 1940, the ATA's first eight women pilots were recruited, and, based at what had been the De Havilland airfield at Hatfield in Hertfordshire, began delivery of unglamorous, 100mph Gipsy Moth training aircraft.
Continue reading...