In an astonishing flying life, centenarian aviatrix Mary Ellis flew no less than four hundred Spitfire aircraft in the Air Transport Auxiliary, delivering these iconic fighters to RAF airfields. Melody Foreman takes up her story.
Flying with the Air Transport Auxiliary
Destiny was calling excited schoolgirl, Mary Wilkins, when she leapt into an aircraft to take her first flight aged just eight years old. Propped up with cushions in the cockpit of a DH60 Moth she couldn’t stop smiling as the great aviator and Royal Flying Corps hero, Sir Alan Cobham, taxied them across the grass. She watched avidly as the propeller blades sliced the air in front of her, faster, faster, faster until the aircraft had left the grass of Witney Airfield and they were sky-bound. Mary was hooked.
The joy she felt was immense, the sense of freedom glorious. And it seemed that Alan Cobham had successfully found another devotee to his educational pledge to help Britain become an ‘air minded’ nation. Indeed, that flight was to herald the future career of diminutive blondehaired Mary who, as a young woman, would end up aiding the war effort as a ferry pilot with the Air Transport Auxiliary. From 1942 to 1946 Mary flew an astonishi…
