Joy Lofthouse
Pilot with the Air Transport Auxiliary who delivered Spitfires and inspired later female aviators
JOY LOFTHOUSE, who has died aged 94, was one of the last two surviving “Spitfire Girls” who flew the great Second World War fighter while serving with the Air Transport Auxiliary. The ATA was established in 1939, responsible for delivering aircraft from factories to RAF units. Over the course of the war it delivered 309,000 of 147 different types, ranging from light training aircraft to heavy four-engine bombers. Pilots flew each type after a short briefing using a basic checklist and without any radio aids. Weather was their worst enemy.
In the summer of 1943, the sport-mad 20-year-old Joy and her elder sister Yvonne, whose bomber pilot husband had recently been killed over Berlin, answered an advertisement for pilots to join the ATA. The two applied along with 2,000 others and just 17 were accepted, including the sisters. Neither had any flying experience – Joy had never even driven a car.
Living in Cirencester, she had been drawn to aviation since the town was close to numerous airfields and she had met many young pilots. In later life she recalled: “I wanted to keep up, know more about what the boys in uniform talked about. That’s why I started reading Aeroplane magazine. You couldn’t just stand there, useless, dumb, when the boys were talking about planes.”
The sisters were among the first ab initio pilots to be trained by the ATA’S own flying school at Thame near Oxford. Joy flew solo after 12 hours of dual instruction and, having completed her training, remained at Thame to ferry light aircraft such as the Tiger Moth and Magister from factories to RAF flying schools. She then joined the all-female ferry pool at Hamble near Southampton, close to various aircraft manufacturers, including the Supermarine factory where Spitfires were built.
Over the next two years she flew 18 different types of aircraft, the majority single-engine. She delivered naval fighters to airfields in Scotland and during the run-up to D-day was busy taking Typhoons, Tempests and Spitfires to squadrons on the south coast. Her favourite was the Spitfire, and she delivered more than 50 of them. She described it as “an iconic plane”, and observed that sitting in it was “like wearing a well-fitting dress”. By the end of the war, she had converted to flying light twin-engine aircraft.
The two young women were the only sisters to fly with the ATA and were among 164 female pilots who flew with the organisation. They were the forgotten women who broke through the barriers of male domination to fly fighters. Decades later their example would inspire many women to join the RAF and fly combat aircraft.
Joyce Gough, always known as Joy, was born in Cirencester on February 14 1923 and educated at Cirencester Grammar School, after which she worked as a cashier in the local Lloyds Bank until she saw the ad in Aeroplane and joined the ATA.
She left the ATA in September 1945 and never flew as a pilot again. She became a schoolteacher and brought up her family.
Throughout her life she remained in contact with her female ATA friends and attended reunions. With seven of her wartime friends she was invited to the RAF’S Officer and Aircrew Selection Centre at Biggin Hill in May 1990 to meet the first female candidates aspiring to become RAF pilots. She later wrote to the Commandant: “Our visit to Biggin Hill brought back many happy memories – we were all made to feel young again for a short while.”
Joy Lofthouse was a vivacious, adventurous and eloquent figure and frequently in demand as a guest on radio, at air shows and other events. In 2010 her sister visited from the United States and they were guests at the Kemble Air Day near Cirencester, when the two were reunited with a Spitfire, the first time they had been together with the fighter since the war.
In 2015, at the age of 92, Joy Lofthouse took to the air again in a Spitfire, the first time she had flown in the aircraft for 70 years. Flying from Goodwood in a dual control version of the fighter she professed to be “not as confident as I was when I used to fly them alone when I was young”. After the flight she said: “It was lovely. It was perfect.” The video of the event became an internet sensation.
In July 2016 she was invited to take a seat in the Royal Box at Wimbledon’s Centre Court, and when she was introduced to the crowd she received a prolonged ovation.
Her role in the ATA and that of her fellow Spitfire Girls was largely overlooked until in 2008 the prime minister, Gordon Brown, was persuaded to honour them with a commemorative badge. She told friends, with a whimsical smile: “For 60 years nobody asked me about my wartime job, but for the past 10 I’ve been dining out on it.”
Joy Lofthouse married Jiri Hartman, a Czech fighter pilot, in 1945 and the marriage ended in divorce. In 1971 she married Squadron Leader Charles Lofthouse, a former Pathfinder Lancaster pilot, who died in 2002. She is survived by a son and daughter from her first marriage; another son predeceased her.
Joy Lofthouse, born February 14 1923, died November 15 2017