Joan Hughes

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Joan Lily Amelia Hughes, MBE (27 April 1918 - 16 August 1993) was Second World War ferry pilot and one of Britain's first female test pilots.

Hughes was born in the the West Ham district of London in 1918, by the time she was 17 she had become the youngest female flyer in Great Britain. She started flying training when she was 15, before age restrictions were introduced.

As an experienced aviator she joined the Air Transport Auxiliary and she soon had more than 600 hours ferrying aircraft around the country. Although she was only small in stature she ferried all types of aircraft including heavy four-engine bombers. She soon became a senior pilot and became the only woman qualified to instruct on all types of military aircraft that were then in service.

Hughes was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1946 for her war work ^[1]. She continued to fly after the war using her talents as an instructor.

In the 1960s due to her small size and experience she was involved in testing, then flying a replica of a 1909 Demoiselle in the film Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines. She also flew replica aircraft for the film The Blue Max.

In the 1960s she was also a flying instructor with the Airways Aero Association at White Waltham.

She retired in 1985 with 11,800 hours in her logbook, and she died in Somerset on 16 August 1993 aged 74.

[edit] References

• Enid deBois, ‘Hughes, Joan Lily Amelia (1918–1993)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [[1]]