Pioneer of the skies who won over the world

On the 90th anniversary of her pioneering solo flight to Australia, David Behrens looks at the enduring fame of Hull’s Amy Johnson.

SHE WAS not only a pioneer aviator but also one of the most inspirational women of her time, and fully 90 years after she became the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia, Amy Johnson’s name has lost none of its allure.

As a series of podcasts marks the anniversary of her epic, 19day adventure, these pictures from the archive recall the rollercoaster life of the fish merchant’s daughter from Hull who for a few years was literally on top of the world.

She had become seduced by the sight of powered aircraft taking to the skies after catching a bus to Stag Lane Aerodrome in London – a city to which she had fled after a failed love affair in Yorkshire.

With only 75 hours of reported flying experience but bolstered, as one headline put it, by a “cupboard full of frocks”, she caught the attention of a world that was as smitten as she was by the winged wonders of the age.

It was, said Dave Windass, writer of the podcasts for the Amy Johnson Arts Trust website, a story of “Hollywood proportions”.

Despite mechanical problems and bad weather, she arrived at Darwin only four days short of a world record, and on her return to Britain was awarded the CBE by George V and £10,000 from a newspaper.

Two years later, a tickertape parade in New York was laid on for her and her new husband, Jim Mollison, after a perilous, two-handed Atlantic crossing.

But it was to be a career cut short by tragedy. Amy died in 1941 when her plane crashed into the Thames estuary off Herne Bay – an incident that has remained mired in mystery and not a little controversy. Some say her aircraft was mistaken for a German bomber and shot down by anti-aircraft guns; others believe she was on a secret Government mission. Her body was never recovered.

PICTURES: GETTY IMAGES. PICTURE: HUDSON/TOPICAL PRESS AGENCY/GETTY IMAGES. FAME AND FORTUNE: Amy Johnson in her aviator’s costume; Amy Johnson arrives at Croydon, June 15, 1936, after setting a new record for a solo flight from Cape Town to London; the aviator on her way to London from Croydon Aerodrome after completing the last lap of her flight when she broke the ‘double’ record between England and Cape Town; circa 1933, Amy Johnson climbing into her bi-plane. INTREPID ADVENTURER: November 8, 1932, British aviation pioneer Amy Johnson (1903 - 1941) at Stag Lane Aerodrome, London, before leaving for Cape Town in an attempt to break her husband’s 17- hour record for the journey.

PICTURES: HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES. ON TOP OF THE WORLD: Amy Johnson, top, flying her plane, The Seafarer, circa 1932; the aviator waves on her arrival at Tempelhof airport, Berlin, on January 3, 1931, on the first leg of her solo flight to China via Siberia.