Spitfire Girl: My Life in the Sky

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About this Book

About the Author

Table of Contents

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To Reg,

You are my love, and my delight,

You are the thrill I find so sweet,

Wrapped in your arms I am complete.

1945

Contents

Cover

Welcome Page

Epigraph

Introduction

Key Events in Jackie’s Life

Part 1: Pre-war

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Part 2: War

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Part 3: Post-war

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Part 4: Desert interlude

Note

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Epilogue

Afterword

Picture section

Appendix A

Postscript

About this Book

About the Author

An Invitation from the Publisher

Copyright

Introduction

Earth, why should I return to you?

The sky is such a lovely blue;

Oh Earth, why should I return to you?

1940

My mother Jackie was like two women in one: artistic, romantic, forgetful and disorganised, but when she climbed into an aeroplane she became focused, calm and very capable – not my mother at all! She loved many things: singing, dancing, sewing and painting, but her main passion in life was flying. Up in the sky is where she belonged.

On Saturday mornings, my little sister Candy and I would jump into our mother’s bed and sit beneath the billowing duvet – the clouds – and play at being Spitfire pilots. As we held the pretend joystick she would say, ‘just think right and it will go right, the Spitfire is so sensitive it should always be flown by a lady’. Candy remembered those duvet lessons fifty years later when she went up in Spitfire ML407, an aircraft Jackie had been the first to ferry, now owned by our great friend Carolyn Grace, who has kindly written the Afterword for this edition.

My mother’s life of adventure began in South Africa, where she was brought up to be a good, prim Catholic girl by her grandmother, whom she adored. Although these codes stayed with her forever, she had a very open mind and a strong will. If she didn’t agree with a teaching of the church she’d just say, ‘well, a man made that rule up, not God, so you can ignore that one’.

From her first flight at fifteen, Jackie was hooked. When I was born, in 1946, she was determined to continue working – just as a man would have done. ‘There’s mummy dear,’ our father would say as he pointed to an aircraft in the sky. For years after I was convinced all aeroplanes were called ‘Mummy Dears’.

Even though Jackie flew aircraft for the ATA during World War Two, she still struggled to find work once peace was declared. Of course this got her down, but she refused to feel defeated, taking any and every opportunity to stay in the sky. So, from the age of about two, I would be strapped onto the back of her motorbike and sped off to various local airfields, singing all the way. When she was working for Channel Airways in the late 1950s, she would often sneak me onto the plane along with the other passengers. If there was no seat to spare, she’d just plonk me down in the doorway between cabin and cockpit – hang health and safety!

The summer I turned fourteen I joined her up in Perthshire where she was flying aircraft for Meridian Air Maps. Jackie was sick as a dog, but she wasn’t ill, she was pregnant. Somehow she managed to hide it from everyone. She continued to work right up until Candy was born, two months early, never letting on she was expecting. Amazingly, she was back flying again six months later.

Growing up, Candy and I knew our mother was unusual, but we didn’t realise how exceptional she was until much later. It’s a credit to her that she always remained ‘mummy’ first and foremost, but like all children we sometimes found our mother excruciatingly embarrassing. I remember turning up terribly late for my first day at boarding school as Jackie had been flying all day. Into the school we burst, my mother in her Captain’s uniform, closely followed by an airline hostess who was hitching a ride home with us. I was mortified, but everyone just assumed Jackie was a bus conductress. Candy didn’t escape either, she had to suffer the pain of turning up at school every day in a horrid, bright blue helmet on the back of Jackie’s Honda motorbike. Although she begged to be left at the end of the road, she was always dropped right in front of the school gates, for all to see.

My father, Reg, was the quiet strength behind Jackie. He fully supported her need to fly and was immensely proud of her achievements. They met at a dance in 1940 but the war kept them apart for most of their courtship and early married life. Like many lovebirds of their time they had to rely on letters. Jackie would often tell the story of how she attached a love letter for Reg to her 2oz bar of ration chocolate and dropped it from her aircraft as she flew over Aylesbury where he was posted at the time. Tied to her parcel was a note telling the finder to keep the chocolate, but please deliver the letter to Reg Moggridge! He always received his post.

Re-reading this book has made both of us appreciate, more than ever, the amazing things our mother achieved in what was, very much, a man’s world. Jackie absolutely loathed housework and, at times, the dull routine of being a housewife would get her down. She just didn’t think she was any good at it. She would rant and rave whilst wrestling with the washing-up saying, ‘don’t ever get married dear, you’ll have to cook and clean for the rest of your life’, but, as soon as it was done she’d become her cheerful self again.

It was in the sky that Jackie felt most capable. She was a loving and caring wife, mother and grandmother on the ground, and a vivacious, talented pilot in the air. She taught us to look at the clouds, the moon and the sunset: to take the time to rejoice in things and not just rush on by.

Not long before she died, Jackie was driving to visit me in central London when she was stopped by two young police officers for driving too slowly round Hyde Park Corner. If only they knew how brave and daring she really was, and what a hero she’d been during the war! We hope, by reading her book, you’ll get an inkling of just how remarkable our mother, Captain Jackie Moggridge, really was.

Veronica Jill Robinson (née Moggridge)

with Candida Adkins (née Moggridge)

Key Events in Jackie’s Life

Part 1

Pre-war

When we are very young,

The grown-ups talk as though we cannot hear,

‘Poor Jackie’ mother says aloud,

With poor me standing near.

1938

1

Six months before I was born my widowed mother and I moved to my grandmother’s home. Six months after I was born my mother re-married. My grandmother, old-fashioned and strong-willed, was determined that I should not leave her orthodox Catholic home and influence. It is not difficult to imagine the arguments and promises that centred over my sublimely indifferent head like a tropical storm thundering high in the heavens over a placid lake, but when my mother moved to her new home in Durban I stayed at Pretoria with my grandmother.

The results were inevitable. I adapted myself, and was adapted, to an elderly woman. My behaviour, habits and interests were those calculated to make her happy. I was quiet, reserved and serious except when surrounded by octogenarians.

My grandmother’s firm belief in the Roman Catholic version of faith was a deep-water harbour in which I moored without once slipping the anchor and venturing outside the harbour gates. To her it was a living philosophy to which she referred even on the most trivial matters. In her generation it was simpler to have only black and white. She, and I, were untrammelled by the greys of modem psychology, where, the point of sin and misdemeanour is counter-pointed by environment and hereditary influence. For her, and me, this was right, that, unquestionably, was wrong. Admirable in a grandmother. Insufferable in a grand-daughter.

Thus when I was fourteen and my grandmother died I was a prig and a prude and ill-fitted to return to my mother’s home and the extravagant high spirits of my two step-brothers.

Reviewing my life it seemed inevitable that I would fly, though, looking back, I cannot choose the precise moment and say that was when I was committed to the sky. Perhaps this was it:

‘Sissy.’

‘Baaaby.’

‘Cry Baby.’

‘You wait!’ I cried, ‘I’ll show you.’

‘Showing’ my step-brothers was an empty gesture. I had been showing them for months but they refused to be impressed. Still fuming I left their calumny, jumped on my bike and rode out of Pretoria.

Calmer, I stopped on the dusty road that bordered Swartkop military aerodrome, leaned my bike against the fence and gazed pensively. Aircraft, the sun ricocheting sharply from their windscreens, rose gracefully and effortlessly into the sky. No longer pensive I cycled nearer to the hangars, parked my bike against a ‘Trespassers will be Prosecuted’ sign and looked closely at the pilots and pilots-to-be. I watched them until the last aircraft landed, the hangar doors closed and quiet returned to the aerodrome.

Riding home I wondered about the pilots. They seemed perfectly normal. Their hands into which they placed their lives were as mine. They had laughed and gestured ordinarily; oblivious of the courage, nobility and many other virtues that my admiration lavished upon them.

After I had been told off for being late for tea I announced that I was going to be a pilot.

‘Yah! You couldn’t fly for toffee.’

It went on like this until, over my fifteenth birthday breakfast, my mother, entirely hoodwinked by my unwary and apocryphal affection for flying, announced that for my birthday present we were all to drive out to Rand airport for my first flight. She called it a joy-ride. The sudden departure of my appetite and an attack of biliousness were charitably attributed to excitement. I have never been so frightened in all my life.

The drive to the airport was purgatory. I prayed for an earthquake, a flat tyre, anything to deter further progress as I wrestled with the problem of Scylla and Charybdis; the fear of flying or the humiliation of admitting the lies of the last few months. I chose, if such a word describes an almost involuntary action, the whirlpool of flying with its remote possibility of survival to the certainty of rock-like ignominy that would follow confession.

The wretched airport looked peaceful with an air of gentle laziness and shimmering quiet broken only by the departure or arrival of aircraft that, paradoxically, seemed to intrude. Irresistibly we drove through the gates to the excited and envious comments of my step-brothers. My mother had the smug expression of those who give. I tried very hard to wrench my ankle as I stepped out of the car but succeeded only in giving myself ineffectual pain.

I remember nothing of that first flight except the studied disgust of the pilot as he delicately avoided my breakfast and the feeling of unutterable relief when my feet touched soil again.

I contrived to avoid further combat but towards the latter part of the following year as I neared my sixteenth birthday, it was evident that my position as a ‘pilot’ needed strengthening. I requested a repeat performance. This time, on my birthday, we drove to Barragwanath airport, the headquarters of Johannesburg Flying Club, and I remember every minute of it.

The aircraft, de Havilland Moths, stood wing-tip to wing-tip in a neat line in front of the administration buildings. I was introduced to the veteran who was to transport me to another element. He was casually unconcerned as he showed me around the aircraft prior to our flight. Had he, I wondered, forgotten his first few flights. Rapidly he strapped me into the front cockpit immediately behind the engine and then climbed into the cockpit behind me. I sat, frightened, and gazed at the welter of instruments, wires and crash pad. Everything seemed oddly still. A mechanic appeared and, with the order ‘Contact,’ spun the propeller. The engine coughed into action and transformed the plane into vibrating animation. The tiny pointers on the instruments rose, registering goodness knows what. A laconic ‘O.K.?’ through the speaking tube attached to my helmet calmed my fear as we taxied out over the grass. The rattle of the tail skid on the uneven surface sent a series of judders through the frail structure; the wings curved and swayed with an action of their own. With a sharp turn we stopped at the far end of the field.

Another laconic grunt implied something, but before I could answer my back was pushed sharply against the back rest and we careered along the field. Fascinated, I saw the nose lower until I could see along the top of the engine. The wind thrust at my head and buffeted me like a punching bag. The airport buildings lurched and ran towards us. Closer they came until I could see our car parked nearby. They’ll catch us, I thought childishly, thinking of a game of tag, when suddenly they gave up the chase and slid smoothly beneath us. Timidly I looked ahead and saw the horizon. The large horizon of pilots, with the earth sinking into insignificance beneath. We banked steeply and as I looked down the left wing and saw the ground I was conscious of the void beneath me. I wondered what I sat on, looked down between my feet and was horrified to see canvas and flimsy bits of wood. Panic-stricken I tried to hold on to the struts that supported the top wing; the wind tore my hands away and only another grunt from the rear prevented sheer hysteria.

Suddenly the unnerving roar of the engine subsided to the gentle caressing swish of wind against the wings. I relaxed and was sick. The saucer of the earth gradually flattened as we glided towards the field. Gently the plane transferred its weight from the air to the ground and the swish gave way to a rumble of wheels and tail skid as they creaked protestingly over the field. We stopped, and everything was still.

In the last few moments of that flight, after fear and panic departed, leaving a brilliance of perception that follows all malaise, I realized that now I wanted to fly. Wanted the exhilaration of fear and difference. A world beyond my step-brothers.

We had lunch at the airport and I spent the afternoon enquiring about the economics of learning to fly. To my dismay I learned that I could not qualify for a licence until I was seventeen. I could however commence flying lessons immediately. I was introduced to the Chief Flying Instructor who, as I watched in awe, spoke of pounds, shillings and pence. Fortunately my mother was with me and absorbed these essential matters.

That night and every night for weeks my mother and I discussed and argued interminably. The entire family and all my relations were united in their opposition against my wish to fly. The four pounds a week, they suggested, could be more usefully spent on a finishing school, preparation for university or marriage, or scores of other estimable projects.

2

I had my first flying lesson two months later. It was a trial lesson with the Chief Flying Instructor prior to committing myself to the full course necessary for obtaining an ‘A’ licence. This first lesson was in a Hornet Moth, with side-by-side seating arrangements and an enclosed cockpit. Looking back I realize that most of my early difficulties were due to the lop-sided effect of sitting on one side. As the instructor levelled off high above Johannesburg he gestured to me to take over control. At that time I was about five feet tall and could barely reach the control column and rudder bars. I stretched, coupled my fingers around the joystick and clung on, hard. The following series of evolutions, a faithful exposition of all I had read in a book entitled ‘Learn to Fly by Correspondence Course,’ defy description.

‘Try some straight and level flight,’ said the instructor wearily.

‘But I am,’ I answered.

‘Oh.’

We landed, I was sick again and we had a fatherly chat in his office.

Despite his advice I arranged to take the full course and had five rather unproductive lessons on the Hornet Moth before transferring to the illustrious Tiger Moth. This machine, vehicle of pioneering record-breaking flights, with its tandem seating and open cockpit seemed more of a friend than an enemy to be conquered. Each Sunday, weather permitting, and in South Africa it usually did, I had one lesson lasting an hour and a lecture or two on ground subjects.

Getting to the airport, 45 miles from home, had become a problem so I bought a motor-bike or, rather, my mother bought one for me. This of course played havoc with her estimated budget of flying costs.

I failed to fulfil gloomy prognostications of an early death and became inordinately attached to this machine. It reacted to my moods. A bilious approach would provoke mule-like obstinacy and though I would kick the starter for hours it would remain inanimate. Happiness, induced by Sunday sunshine and freedom would bring a response of eagerness and burbling vivacity and we would roll along, friends, reluctant to turn back, anxious to explore together the next hill, the next horizon.

Flying, and my motor-bike, injected me