The incredible story of Mary Ellis
Mary Ellis, the last surviving female pilot who flew in World War II, has died aged 101.
She flew 76 types of plane during the war, delivering more than 1,000 Spitfires and Wellington bombers to the to front line.
Ellis’s extraordinary career began in 1939 when she heard a call on the radio for women to join the Air Transport Auxiliary.
She had gained her pilot’s license aged 21 after beginning flying lessons as a teenager, and first flew as a child in 1925 when her father took her up in a in a de Havilland Moth biplane.
“I am passionate for anything fast and furious,” she wrote in her biography, A Spitfire Girl.
“I always have been since the age of three and I always knew I would fly. The day I stepped into a Spitfire was a complete joy and it was the most natural thing in the world for me.”
She was one of 166 women who joined the ATA, earning them the nickname the Atagirls. Their job was to fly Britain’s fighter jets from the factories to the airfields.
Seeing a woman in the cockpit was the cause of astonishment to a number of the RAF pilots.
At one base, the crew refused to believe that the Wellington bomber that had landed in front of them was piloted by Ellis.
She said: “They actually went inside the aeroplane and searched it.
“Everybody was flabbergasted that a little girl like me could fly these big aeroplanes all by oneself.”
Ellis was born in Oxfordshire in 1917, and grew up close to the RAF bases at Bicester and Port Meadow.
She recalled being interested in planes ‘from the year dot’, and was accepted into the ATA in 1941.
During the war she undertook dangerous and challenging work, flying unfamiliar and often damaged aircraft.
“We’d say to each other, ‘Oh look what I’ve got, look what I’ve got’. And that was terribly exciting. Sometimes frightening as well because the aeroplanes were all different. You’d get out of a Tiger Moth into a Wellington bomber and then into a Spitfire,” she recalled.
She was shot at once as she flew over Bournemouth and twice crash landed her aircraft.
As well as the ‘exhilarating’ work, Ellis enjoyed some of the perks of life at the all-women’s ATA pool in Hamble, Hampshire.
She said: “We had lots of boyfriends. Because at that time we were called the ‘glamour girls’ – I don’t know why. But there were always plenty of escorts around.”
After the war, Ellis joined the RAF before becoming the manager of Sandown Airport on the Isle of Wight.
In 1961, she married fellow pilot Don Ellis, and the couple lived by the runway of the airport until his death in 2009.
Earlier this year, she was given the freedom of the Isle of Wight after being described by council leader Dave Stewart as a “national, international and island heroine”.
