Jonathan Thomas (00:00.778)
we are recording so I just want to make sure that all our levels are fine.

Alright.

Stand straight. All right. Welcome to the Anglotopia podcast where we explore British history, travel and culture. I'm your host, Jonathan Thomas. And today I'm thrilled to be joined by author Becky Aikman, whose new book Spitfires, the American women who flew in the face of danger during World War II, which brings to light an incredible and little known story from World War II.

Becky Aikman (00:17.618)
I should set up straight too.

Jonathan Thomas (00:42.85)
During the darkest days of the war, remarkable group of American women pilots crossed the Atlantic to join Britain's air transport auxiliary, ferrying Spitfires, hurricanes, and dozens of other warplanes across the skies of England. Facing mechanical failures, unpredictable weather, and the ever-present risk of death, these daring aviators defied expectations and helped keep Britain's war machine in the air. Through vivid storytelling and meticulous research, Spitfires captures the bravery, ambition,

trailblazing spirit of these women who risked everything not only for the allied cause but for the chance to fly and to break barriers that had long held them back. Today we'll dive into what inspired this extraordinary book, The Incredible Personalities of These Pioneering Women and the dangers they faced both in the skies and on the ground and the lasting impact they had on the history of aviation and the women's role, women's roles in wartime. Welcome to the podcast, Becky.

Becky Aikman (01:35.206)
Thank you, I'm excited to be here.

Jonathan Thomas (01:37.218)
Thank you so much for joining us. This book was fantastic. I'm holding it up for people watching on YouTube. It's a fun read. It ticks all my boxes. World War II, airplanes, interesting women. It's perfect. So I've got a bunch of questions. So we're gonna dive right in. So what first inspired you to tell the story of these American women who ferry pilots during World War II?

Becky Aikman (02:04.786)
Well, I was thinking about a book that I would want to write and I was talking to my mother and told her that I was looking for a story about people who had done something amazing, but no one had heard about it. And she immediately said, you should write about the American women who flew in England during World War II. I had never heard of this thing. I actually Googled around to find out more about it and couldn't find anything.

At first I thought maybe she had mistaken it for something else, but she said, no. I remember I saw a newsreel or a magazine article or something. I thought these women were so noble and glamorous. I wished I could do what they did. So they had obviously inspired her as a child and they were obviously not well known. So I looked into it more and realized that this was something that happened. And for some reason was completely forgotten once the war was over.

Jonathan Thomas (03:04.952)
So the main woman you focus on is Hazel Jane Rains. And how did you discover and come across her stories in this broader group of what they were called the Etta Girls?

Becky Aikman (03:16.07)
Well, when I first started out, I didn't know any of their names. I got in touch with someone who runs a tiny museum in England devoted to the Air Transport Auxiliary. And he told me about some of them and I eventually got other names. Actually, the first person I came across, I read had donated papers to the San Diego Air and Space Museum. And her name was Mary Zerbel.

She had been rather well known before the war as the youngest woman flying instructor in the United States at the age of 19. I went to the museum and opened the files and the librarian said I was the only person who had ever asked to see them. So I had very low expectations, but when I opened it up, she came alive for me. She had left journals and diaries and there were many, many newspaper articles about her from the time. She was famous for

Jonathan Thomas (04:01.09)
Wow.

Becky Aikman (04:14.48)
being such a young pilot and also she was the first of two American service people who married in the war zone during World War II. By the time I got to the end, I found her obituary and it consisted of only three sentences in a small newspaper in Idaho and it made no mention whatsoever of her flying career. So I decided this is something I definitely needed to look into.

So eventually I focused on several of the women, maybe five or six are my main characters, but one of them was Hazel Raines, Hazel Jane Raines, as she was known to her family. She grew up in Georgia in a very, what she called hat and gloves kind of family that expected her to be following the template of her sisters, which was to marry and have a nice home and go to church every Sunday. But she studied music in college, but.

She took up a challenge to learn to fly and eventually, no doubt shocked her relations by joining something called the Georgia Air Show where she performed crazy stunts to thrill the crowds. She wanted nothing more than to fly and especially she wanted to fly in the military during the war. So she devoted all of her efforts toward that. And I found that she had left some wonderful letters that described

her experience, her dreams, her life, and I relied on that a lot.

Jonathan Thomas (05:47.32)
So now this is when she wanted to join the war. This is at the point when America was not involved at all. So this was she just wanted to fly. And so she was in the cohort of people who went to Britain during the war before the war or before America got in the war to fly for the RAF and to do these fairings. So like how, how did she like decide to do that and go on such a journey? Cause I, I like, mean, we weren't even in the war, so we had no skin in the game. So what made her decide to do that?

Becky Aikman (06:16.228)
Well, all of these women shared a desire to fly. They loved flying. They loved the sense of freedom it gave them, the sense of control, the sense of being in charge of their own destinies. They flew for various reasons professionally. Some were flying instructors, some like hazel or stunt pilots. Some flew for pleasure. One was a crop duster. They flew for all different reasons, but they loved it. And with the war looming,

They all wanted to serve in the military because they were skilled pilots. They had a valuable skill. But the United States military decided that they would not permit any women to fly. suddenly out of the blue, they all received a telegram from the famous aviatrix, Jackie Cochran, inviting them to join her and going to Great Britain to fly. They all leapt at the chance. It was a dream come true for them.

Jonathan Thomas (07:16.792)
So as you were researching the story of these women, what surprised you most during your research about these women's contributions to the war effort in Britain?

Becky Aikman (07:26.79)
Well, I suppose what surprised me the most was how they were forgotten afterwards. They became the first American women to fly military aircraft and not just one or two beginner aircraft. They were expected to fly up to 147 different models of airplanes in this job in England. Everything from the tiniest little one engine trainers to the speediest, most powerful fighters.

to the biggest bombers. They were expected to jump into the cockpit, often with no familiarity with a particular aircraft. They had a little one-page summary of how to fly it. They'd read it over and they'd take off. So it was not just a trailblazing job in that they were the first to do it. It was a very demanding and challenging job and very dangerous.

So I was shocked that it wasn't better remembered. The other thing that surprised me most, that's two things, is that they did seize the opportunity that the war gave them to live very freely and be who they wanted to be when they were serving in the war. And that was exciting to learn about too.

Jonathan Thomas (08:46.306)
Well, it's interesting that, you know, the frontline male pilots, you know, they train for months to learn one aircraft type. And then these women, had, like you said, minutes to basically learn how to fly that plane. But because they were so skilled at flying, they could get into any aircraft and ferry to where it needed to go. that's astounding.

Becky Aikman (08:57.33)
Mm.

Jonathan Thomas (09:12.15)
As somebody who's familiar with aviation, like just the idea of getting into a cockpit and flying a plane that you've never flown before and knowing how to do it is just mind boggling to me.

Becky Aikman (09:22.338)
It is mind boggling and obviously the people who did this work had to be the most talented pilots in the world, in my opinion. Now they were not dropping bombs or engaging in dogfights and those are all very difficult and dangerous things to do too. But the fact that they were expected to do so much with so little training and that they had that flexibility to take on whatever was thrown at them was really impressive.

Jonathan Thomas (09:49.112)
So why do you think the story remains so little known, at least in America for so long? Because I know in Britain, the British women who ferried pilots are moderately well known. But why do you think in America this story is kind of forgotten?

Becky Aikman (10:01.33)
Mm-hmm.

Becky Aikman (10:05.34)
I think most of their story happened in Great Britain and the British public was very grateful to flyers from their own country and people who would come from around the world to help them in this time of need. It was crucial work. It's easy to forget now that Great Britain was hanging in the balance. All of Europe had fallen to...

Germany and they were standing alone trying to defend themselves. They were being bombed relentlessly. They desperately needed these aircraft. They were trying to manufacture them as fast as they could and get them out so they could serve. So people really appreciated this work over there. Americans were less aware of it. And also I think what these women did fell outside of the usual parameters of what's covered in history.

since they weren't serving in the official US military, I think they haven't been part of commemorations and all other things that recognize pioneers in this field. after the war, a busy world just moved on and forgot about them.

Jonathan Thomas (11:18.296)
Just a shame. I think now I might be skipping ahead a little bit, so forgive me, but it's skipping ahead. When America did enter the war, did these women still ferry these aircraft and did they still participate in the war? And then again, how are they still forgotten? It's like, come on.

Becky Aikman (11:36.598)
Well, they were delivering aircraft for the Royal Air Force in Great Britain. So that's another reason they didn't get much attention. But they did sign up before the US entered the war. And by the time they got there, the US had declared war. But they were really just about the first people on the ground over there who were Americans, because it took quite a while for large numbers of Americans to deploy in England. the summer of 1942, they started to. But these women arrived.

in the spring. So yeah, they should be remembered. We're trying to fix that now.

Jonathan Thomas (12:11.609)
Good. I recently, Apple had a TV show, Masters of the Air, which was really good. was a fantastic, a well done series on the American bomber pilots. I feel like this could have been several episodes of that show. Like, it's so interesting that it's a shame that it was, that's not as well known. So in...

Becky Aikman (12:32.824)
very well done and very accurate in my opinion.

Jonathan Thomas (12:34.926)
Yeah, yeah, it's intense. Like, I remember watching like the second episode when they're in one of the air battles over Europe and I'm like, I am not a man. could not like I cannot fathom going through what these men went through in the air over Europe. Like it just, no, I'm a a coward.

Becky Aikman (12:56.262)
Well, number of the women that I wrote about were involved with men who were doing those bombing runs and their chances of survival were really poor. It was a scary thing to fall in love with one of those guys and some of my women did. Now, the job that the transport pilots were doing, one in seven died during the course of the war in crashes. So it was not exactly a safe job. And I have that same feeling you do. I often thought...

Jonathan Thomas (13:03.16)
Yeah.

Jonathan Thomas (13:09.08)
Yeah.

Jonathan Thomas (13:15.523)
Really?

Becky Aikman (13:22.898)
I don't think I'm brave enough to do what people were doing then. I mean, they knew that any flight could be their last and somehow they just forged ahead and did it. Really impressive.

Jonathan Thomas (13:24.514)
Yeah.

Jonathan Thomas (13:35.436)
Well, it was really hard for them making the show because, you know, a lot of the characters die. So, and that's spoilers, but I mean, the, it's hard to follow enough characters for the show to make it an interesting drama because so many just died and like that was it, you know? So, speaking of crashes, the prologue of your book features a vivid and dramatic crash scene. How did you go about reconstructing that moment so vividly?

Becky Aikman (13:50.318)
Right, exactly.

Jonathan Thomas (14:04.074)
Is it from letters or is it from interviews?

Becky Aikman (14:09.338)
There are quite a few vivid crash scenes in the course of the book, and those took the most work of anything I did. I would say any given one, I drew from maybe 30 or 40 sources. Sometimes the pilots who survived wrote about it in letters or diaries. Sometimes there was some newspaper coverage of it. But there wasn't a whole lot about any of these crashes. I'd just find a hint that something had happened.

One of the first things I would do would be go to the RAF Museum in London and they had records of the crashes. They were hard to decipher for an amateur. They were just punch cards and you had to know what the categories were. And it was very minimal information. It would be like, yeah, propeller failure, crashed, pilot deceased. That was about it. So I would start with that information and...

As you know, I relied on a lot of letters and diaries by all of the women. And so of course, when these things happened, they would talk about it, what they had all heard. So I would put all of that together. And then I would do the real legwork, which was to try to find eyewitnesses who were still alive and saw some of these crashes. And I was fortunate enough to find some, mostly people who had been children at the time, but had really vivid memories of

seeing what happened and were quite traumatized by it actually. Then the final step was that I had sort of a kitchen cabinet of historic aviation experts who were very happy to help me and they would go through all this information with me and try to interpret what had gone wrong and why and what the pilot did because it was important to me. I'm writing for a general audience. They don't really want to know that a particular kind of valve had

lack of oil and therefore there was a crash. I wanted to tell each of these stories from the point of view of the pilot. What did she experience? What did she first notice? Did she understand what had gone wrong? What were her options? How did she decide what to do? And how that would be done? Like what you would do to make that happen? So in the case of the prologue, that was Hazel Jane Reines and she was flying a Spitfire.

Becky Aikman (16:33.714)
on what looked to be a nice day. Now there were two things that could go wrong a lot in this job. One is that the aircraft were brand new or in some cases they had been badly damaged in battle. So a lot of things went wrong with the aircraft causing people to crash. And the other thing that could go wrong was sudden bad English weather where suddenly there would be clouds or rain or snow. Well, she had it all happen at once in this particular flight.

She was flying a brand new Spitfire. The engine failed right at the moment that she entered a cloud bank. So she lost all visibility and she had no power in her engine. So she decided to try to turn back where she knew there might be an airfield she could glide to. In the course of trying to make a turn with no visibility, the aircraft tipped too far to the side and lost its lift and began to fall and went into a spin, which was just driving into the ground.

at high speed, very nauseating, very disorienting. But luckily Hazel had been an expert stunt pilot. So when she emerged finally from the cloud, she was very close to the ground and most people couldn't save the aircraft at that point, but she knew what to do. She got out of the spin and leveled off just before she hit the ground, not in time to pick a good place to land. She hit a cottage with a thatched roof.

It had three feet of straw on top of it, which helped to cushion the crash. The Spitfire was completely destroyed and the town came to, as they put it, dig the dead man out. They opened the canopy and up popped Hazel Reigns. Everyone was shocked. Not only that she was alive, but she was a woman and an American woman.

So it caused a great deal of shock on the ground. And I was fortunate to talk to people who knew about what was happening on the ground when she made it there. So to assemble that kind of story took a lot of effort, but it showed a lot about what the job was and showed a lot about the amazing skill of the pilots who often made spectacular saves like this in dire situations.

Jonathan Thomas (18:53.238)
It sounds like a really intricate and fascinating puzzle to put together, so I applaud you for finding all the pieces. As a fellow writer, it's a lot of work.

Becky Aikman (19:01.296)
was always triangulating multiple sources of information. What someone said in a diary, what the report said, what the child who was sitting on the stoop next to the house saw. It was fun. And I would joke with one of these people who helped me that we should open an historic aviation detective agency and find out what had happened with crashes. Because during the war, there was a war on and people didn't have time to investigate in great detail what had happened.

Jonathan Thomas (19:05.998)
Yeah.

Jonathan Thomas (19:29.806)
Well, that's a British cozy drama I'd sign up to watch. So, other than the British weather and the unpredictability of the aircraft, what were some of the biggest dangers that ferry pilots faced aside from possible enemy action over the skies of Britain?

Becky Aikman (19:32.85)
you

Becky Aikman (19:48.004)
Yeah, enemy action turned out to be the least of it. It was more the problems with the aircraft and the weather. Many, pilots died for one reason or another. When they would hit these low visibility points, they would often wind up crashing into a mountain or a church steeple or something. And they were not permitted to fly using instruments.

Often they hadn't been installed yet because the planes were new, but they weren't trained to use instruments and were told not to do it. This was very controversial because many pilots thought lives could be saved, but there was the thought that they wanted the pilots to be cautious and not take off unless conditions were perfect. But those conditions changed and most of my characters over the course of the war started to cheat.

And they learned how to use the instruments on the sly and often did use them against orders. Another strict order was that if you hit clouds, you were supposed to try to get under them. But as you know, in Great Britain, sometimes those clouds would go all the way down to the ground. You're not supposed to try to go up above the clouds because you might wind up there. And if you couldn't find a gap to get back through, you would eventually run out of fuel.

Jonathan Thomas (21:01.592)
Yeah.

Becky Aikman (21:12.69)
crash. A few people did go over these clouds. They called it the concrete. And if you were above the concrete and couldn't find your way through, there were some deadly crashes based on that. But many of them felt safer at least trying that than trying to get close to the ground and possibly hitting some obstruction.

Jonathan Thomas (21:32.024)
That's interesting that they wouldn't let them use the, some of the time wouldn't let them use the instruments because one of the main things that you do when you get a pilot's license is you have to be able to learn how to fly instrument only in case of an emergency. like the fact that they kind of like put their arm, tied their arm behind their back is interesting.

Becky Aikman (21:50.65)
Yeah, it made it tough and it's an example of how in a war people can be expendable. I think the decision was made that they would lose some people this way, but they were losing people all over the place and decided this was one they were willing to take.

Jonathan Thomas (22:06.646)
wild. mean, in modern military warfare, like the pilot is paramount. you everything is designed to save the pilot's life. Whereas in World War Two, was the pilot survived. That's great. But as long as the mission was completed, you know, it's sad.

Becky Aikman (22:26.31)
The reports, it was always interesting to me, went on and on about the condition of the aircraft and barely mentioned the pilot in these situations. That was the priority and they all understood it.

Jonathan Thomas (22:39.342)
Yeah. The the the bravery needed I just again I can't like we're talking about I can't comprehend. All my little drive to work at that's as brave as I get. So how would you describe the spirit that united these women like Dorothy Helen and Winnie like that you know as they're over there you know they're there before America's truly in the war.

What is driving them other than just trying to get flying hours?

Becky Aikman (23:15.248)
You know, sometimes you read about things like this and you read that these people are so noble and patriotic and that's why they're doing it. And that was part of why they did it. But these were also individual people who were ambitious. They wanted flying careers. It was really tough, if not impossible for a woman to have one. They wanted to make that happen. So they were willing to do what it took to do what they wanted. They also enjoyed the freedom that they had being in a war zone, far from home.

far from expectations and they lived the way they wanted to live during the war. I that's another thing that really surprised me. They were kind of a wild group at times. So they were united by the spirit that they wanted the same things. At the same time, they weren't angels. They were competitive with each other. Some of them had real rivalries at wanting to be the first to fly the toughest aircraft. They were real people.

And luckily, they'd left behind enough that I could really capture them as individuals.

Jonathan Thomas (24:21.848)
Dorothy's life almost reads like fiction. So how did you piece together her story from all these records? it's wild.

Becky Aikman (24:32.272)
Yeah, one after another, these pilots, I kept saying, you could not make this up. And when I first spoke to the man who ran that little museum in Maidenhead, England, he said, I hope you don't plan to fictionalize this because nothing could be as dramatic and glamorous as the reality. And I thought, hmm, that sounds pretty good. But he was right. I think if this was fiction, people would say, she went too far here. Dorothy Fury.

Jonathan Thomas (24:38.894)
Ha ha ha.

Becky Aikman (25:01.156)
was a very beautiful young woman. She came from an impoverished background in New Orleans. She only had an eighth grade education, although she was very intelligent and self-educated. She read a lot. She was the first to join up and was the first woman cleared to fly military aircraft, the first American woman, when she went to Montreal for a test flight. Once she got to

Great Britain, she viewed it as a wonderful opportunity to reinvent herself. She was beautiful. She had a very imperious personality. When she got over there, everyone assumed she was some sort of American aristocrat. And even years after the war, there would be newspaper articles that referred to her as an American heiress, none of which was true. She was poor and she had one.

red party dress that she recycled and she was invited everywhere due to her beauty and her wit. She was determined to marry well and she certainly did. She wound up as a member of the British aristocracy. No one knew any better. How did I find out about all this? She did not leave diaries, unfortunately, but she was such a character that the others wrote about her constantly in their diaries and letters.

I also was fortunate to find her son who had been told many of her stories over the years and had a great perspective on his mother. So I was able to piece her story together quite completely. And luckily that was so because she is certainly one of the great characters of all time.

Jonathan Thomas (26:48.978)
Definitely. So how did the British attitude towards women pilots differ from the Americans at the time? I I felt famously when the birds had to interact with American soldiers, they were kind of alarmed and shocked by the segregation between whites and blacks. So did they have a sort of similar view about how these women pilots are treated?

Becky Aikman (27:12.946)
Yeah, I got to say the British attitude was a lot more accepting. First of all, the Americans had to go there in order to be able to fly. And the British treated them equally. At the very beginning of the war, women were only allowed to fly the most basic single engine little aircraft. Ultimately, they were cleared to fly everything, including the most gigantic and scary looking bombers. One of the British women said,

When people said, how could a little woman do this? She said, the idea is not for me to lift the plane, but for the plane to lift me. So they were highly respected and allowed to do everything the men did. And partway through the war, they were cleared to get equal pay with the men until then they received 20 % less. The Americans were paid even more. They were paid bonuses for having come from another country to help out. So they were well paid.

Jonathan Thomas (27:50.254)
Ha

Becky Aikman (28:11.302)
well-respected and permitted to do the most challenging work. In the United States, women hadn't been allowed to fly in the military at all. Due to the success of the women in Great Britain, eventually the United States founded the Women Air Force Service Pilots, known as the WASP, and they transported aircraft within the United States. But there was always a rather hostile attitude toward them.

public was always declaring, oh, it's so dangerous being near an airfield with these women flying in and out. men began to worry that after the war, women would get jobs in aviation. So in 1944, while the war was still raging, the WASP was ended in the United States. And my women were following all this very closely because, of course, they were gunning to get jobs in aviation after the war.

they were aware how challenging it would be in their home country. So it drove them to even greater heights of ambition, trying to fly the most difficult, the most impressive array of aircraft so that they could not be denied when the war was over.

Jonathan Thomas (29:28.622)
Yeah, I know. I don't know if you're familiar with the Kalamazoo Air Zoo up in Michigan. There's the Kalamazoo Air Zoo. It's an airplane museum up in Michigan. They have a big display on the wasps. It's really interesting. And I believe that one of the founders of the museum was actually one of the wasps. And they have her plane hanging in the entryway. So.

Becky Aikman (29:35.622)
Mr. Watt,

Jonathan Thomas (29:55.596)
What was it like for these women to move from restrictive, traditional American expectations into the free, chaotic world of wartime Britain? Because they weren't flying planes all the time, so what were they doing when they weren't flying?

Becky Aikman (30:08.028)
Well, another crazy thing about the bravery is that if I were doing that job, every night I would go home and collapse. If I had leave, I would just stay in my room and try to get some sleep. They were living life to the fullest. They had two leave days every two weeks. Most of them went into London and entered the quite frenetic social scene of London. They went to all the most fancy clubs.

Jonathan Thomas (30:14.67)
Yeah.

Becky Aikman (30:37.754)
They rubbed shoulders with diplomats, journalists, generals, spies. They were invited to house parties at the country homes of the aristocrats. They were quite celebrated by people there. And it was, I think, quite a get to have one show up at your party. So they were living quite the social life on top of quite the work life.

Jonathan Thomas (31:07.352)
So can you share one or two particularly hair-raising flying incidents that kind of stood out to you in all this research you did? Or maybe some of you didn't make it into the book?

Becky Aikman (31:17.906)
Well, if it was really hair-raising, I'd put it in. Well, there were several other dramatic moments. And one of the first was with Winnie Pierce. She was perhaps the wildest of the Americans. She lived for thrills in the air and on the ground. She had a crazy social life. And she was really daring at the airfield. In fact, her archrival was a very cautious pilot.

And there was often debate which one would emerge on top, the one who was careful and followed the rules or Winnie, an instinctive pilot who was not afraid to do it her way. They both did very well in the end. But very early on, Winnie was cleared to fly hurricane fighters. These were fighters that could go in excess of 300 miles an hour. They had a 40 foot wingspan. It was a much admired aircraft for its role in the Battle of Britain.

Everyone wanted to fly these really fast planes. Winnie was one of the first to be cleared to fly them. And on one of her first flights, she took off from the airfield at a factory. And almost immediately, the engine failed completely. Now, this is one of the worst things that can happen to any pilot. It's one thing to fail high in the sky when you have time to look around, find a place to land. You're at a fairly high speed, so you can

glide down and do something about it. If you fail right on takeoff, it's considered probably the worst thing that can happen because you're not going fast enough to get very far and you're too low to make any turns and wind up where you would like to be. The orders from their superiors was if this happened, you should just keep going straight ahead and crash as soon as possible, whatever was in the way. A couple weeks before,

one of Winnie's classmates in training had faced this situation and had crashed and died. And Winnie was a pallbearer at the funeral. So when this happened to her, being who she was, she decided instantly she was not going to follow the rules. So she tried something that's called the impossible turn. Pilots considered impossible because to try to turn back to the airfield under those conditions is pretty much impossible.

Becky Aikman (33:40.76)
you're too low to the ground, you don't have enough speed, you'll wind up tipping over and crashing as you're trying to make the turn. But somehow Winnie, in her head, the calculations of how to do it, you'd need a computer and they would have them now, but she did it on her own instinct and managed to turn around and land without a swerve at the airfield. Up to then, many people, especially the British,

had rolled their eyes at Winnie because of her wild and raucous behavior. But at that point, people had to admit that whatever they may have thought of her otherwise, she was an exceptional pilot.

Jonathan Thomas (34:21.464)
So how did they handle the psychological toll of flying in such dangerous conditions without instruments sometimes, without protection? I know, like you mentioned, Hazel crashed into a thatched cottage. I imagine if I crashed an airplane, even if I walked away from it, I would be hiding in a curled up in a ball for several weeks. So how did they just get up and get back in the cockpit?

Becky Aikman (34:48.494)
It's interesting, right after this happened to Winnie, they said, okay, this aircraft doesn't have an engine. Here's another one, get in and deliver it. She had to do it without a break. And Hazel, many people told me that if someone had been in a deadly spin like that, they assumed most pilots in that situation would never get in an airplane again. So again, we're back to how brave they were.

Jonathan Thomas (35:00.524)
Wow.

Becky Aikman (35:17.552)
and are determined because this is the life they wanted. But I was often struck by how they would compartmentalize. There was one moment when Winnie Pierce and Anne Wood, another one of my major characters, were at a nightclub in London. It was called Hackett's Bar, and it was known to have the best dance band at the moment. So they went there, they were drinking champagne. And Anne mentioned in her diaries that a good friend had died the day before.

had hit some high wires and had burned to death. And she mentioned it. And then in the next sentence was talking about the champagne and the band. So I think at the beginning, these sorts of traumatic events really affected them. But if they wanted to keep doing this kind of work, they just started to say, OK, that's over. Move on, move on, move on. It was an attitude that

I think was essential for many people in a war. Otherwise you would ruminate and become too traumatized to keep going.

Jonathan Thomas (36:17.848)
Yeah.

Jonathan Thomas (36:23.746)
You just kind have to get numb to it, otherwise you can't complete the mission. And I'm sure, we'll to that later, but I'm sure maybe it comes out later, you know, when you finally had a chance to process it. You write about how the war liberated these women and putting them in a situation that women normally weren't in. How did their lives change socially while they were in Britain? How did their personal lives change? mean, this is a...

all these women went through life-changing experiences almost on a daily basis. So, you know, how did that change them?

Becky Aikman (36:59.056)
Well, Winnie Pierce, for example, had many, love affairs and it's a way to deal with it. And she often spent the night at Claridge's Hotel in London with the rather mysterious man about town that she was having an affair with.

Jonathan Thomas (37:03.714)
That's a way to deal with it, right?

Jonathan Thomas (37:13.614)
Not a bad way to spend the evenings in clareges.

Becky Aikman (37:15.916)
Yeah, his identity eventually got resolved when people realized what he was actually up to. One of the other women was an actual aristocrat, unlike Dorothy Fury. Virginia Farr was a member of the family of the Western Union Fortune, and she was expected to grow up and be a debutante and capture an equally wealthy husband.

This was never for her. When she discovered flying, she saw this as an escape from her gilded cage. She wanted a career in aviation. And when she got to go to Great Britain, she saw it as a complete escape from her family's expectations. While she was there, she fell in love with a woman and lived out her life in that way from then on. So that was a very stark example.

Others had to make the same decisions that women make today all the time about how to balance your work life and your social life. It's just that both were very extreme here. So many of them did want a traditional marriage, but they also wanted to continue flying. So a couple of them married during the course of the war to men who were pilots over there and tried to balance that. And most of them wound up

having a nice mix in their lives, which was rare for the 1940s. For some of them, it was tougher. One of them became pregnant and tried to keep it a secret, but she was ultimately banned from flying because the officials did not want pregnant women flying the aircraft. It was just very freeing in general for them that they got to make their own decisions and

disregard what people expected from them.

Jonathan Thomas (39:16.718)
So you kind of touched on class a little bit. So can you tell us about how class differences between these American women where we don't have a necessarily stratified class structure, but there are definite class differences, like you said, with the debutantes and the regular women. So how did that clash with the British class system and how their attitudes?

Becky Aikman (39:39.292)
Well, that was always very interesting. Many of the British women who flew in these jobs were from very upper crust backgrounds. Those were the people who could afford to learn to fly. And some of them were daughters of the aristocracy or at least the upper middle class. They assumed that the Americans coming over would be the same and behave with a similar decorum.

The very first Americans to arrive, they came in separate ships so that if one was sunk, they wouldn't all go down together. So the first five arrived and were met by the head of the British Women's Unit and some of her top officers. The Americans had been at sea for, I think it was three weeks. They were dodging German submarines the whole time. They were very relieved. While they waited to go through customs, they had a few drinks. They came down.

the gangplank kissing goodbye to the crew. The British women were completely shocked at this raucous behavior. They invited the Americans to dinner that night, but in a very subtle way, Americans didn't get it. They didn't show up at dinner. So the leader of the British contingent left that night on a train and left them to get to London on their own. The first impressions were poor.

And they also arrived at the first air base and had a big party there that also made a very poor impression. So it was tough at first for the Americans to win acceptance on a social level. Now, eventually a couple who are more socially adept arrived on another ship and they helped to bridge the gap. And ultimately the Americans did prove themselves in the air and

did win respect that way and many became very good friends with their British colleagues.

Jonathan Thomas (41:37.772)
All class problems can be smoothed over with good work, right? So you mentioned their lively social lives at places like clareges and the Savoy. Do have a favorite story that kind of captures the spirit of this era?

Becky Aikman (41:58.322)
I'm blanking on this. I already told the story about the guy who hit the wires.

Jonathan Thomas (42:03.288)
Yeah.

Becky Aikman (42:07.162)
Yeah, we'll probably have to edit that one out because I'm just blanking at the moment. They did it often, but it was often similar.

Jonathan Thomas (42:09.262)
All right, that's fine.

Well, if you come up with the answer in the course of the rest of the questions, just let me know.

Becky Aikman (42:16.954)
I'll come. OK, I'll try this one. How about this? The first summer they were there, the American Embassy threw a party and the pilots were invited to it on July 4th. Many of them met at a hotel before the party and had a few drinks and decided they didn't want to go to some stuffy, boring party. And they stayed at the hotel and had the drinks. Anne Wood, who was very, very ambitious in terms of her career.

not only wanting to be a pilot, but wanting to be someone important in aviation someday. She wound up going to the party alone and met various deposed European royalty. She met General Eisenhower. She met the ambassador and she maintained connections with all these sorts of people during the war in hopes that it would help her land a great career later. So the personal life was partly to have fun, but it was also partly

making connections the way people do today to try to advance their careers.

Jonathan Thomas (43:18.924)
all about who you know even even in 1942. So now I'm gonna hopefully this one doesn't stump you either but how do you see the story of the Attagirls fitting into the broader history of women's rights and social change?

Becky Aikman (43:37.564)
think it's an important part of the broader history. I was surprised when I learned about this that women were doing something like this in the 1940s. And I was expecting that very few women had these kinds of opportunities then. I think it's really important for us to find these kinds of stories and include them in history because there are people now who think, women aren't capable of doing this or that. Women have done this or that. It's just that

It hasn't been remembered. think any young person thinking I'd like to become a pilot might think, wow, women didn't even get to be pilots till the seventies, really. The first US airliner pilot for passengers was in the 1970s. They would think, wow, this is just too tough a field for women. I think it would be helpful for them to know that women did this very, very difficult job that long ago at a time when

it wasn't expected that women could do something like that. So all these kinds of stories are an important part of how women have fit into history and what they've achieved.

Jonathan Thomas (44:40.91)
And they do it.

Jonathan Thomas (44:48.734)
Yeah, that sheer force of will, that's what moves the needle in history. Do you think they realized how groundbreaking what they did was?

Becky Aikman (44:54.694)
Hmm.

Becky Aikman (44:59.832)
No, they never thought about it. They had their own reunion in the 1970s and they all kind of said, I didn't do it for women, I did it for me. But they did recognize by then that, yes, they had done it for women. They understood it. At the time they were busy, they were doing a job and they didn't think of themselves as the first American women to fly military aircraft any more than anybody else did. They just did it.

Jonathan Thomas (45:09.506)
Hahaha

Jonathan Thomas (45:26.798)
They just wanted to fly. So what happened to these women after the war ended? Were they able to continue flying or did they return home and return to the domestic expectations that were expected of them? What happened to them?

Becky Aikman (45:30.447)
Becky Aikman (45:44.752)
It was very tough after the war. There'd been so much bad publicity about the WASP. No airline would hire a woman pilot. The US military still would not hire women pilots. So the usual avenues for a job in aviation were shut to them. Nevertheless, we have now learned these were very fierce women. So a lot of them did manage to find ways to pursue what they loved.

One of them formed a company with her husband to transport surplus military planes all around the world from various countries that had them to various countries that wanted them. They were in a lot of really dicey situations with a lot of dubious aircraft. That was also really dangerous work and their company was successful. This was actually the woman whose obituary I had described to you being only three sentences.

During the 1950s, Lana Turner starred in a movie based on her life. That's how dramatic her life was. So it's even more shocking that she was then forgotten after that. Another one of the women came back and took a job where she was practically the janitor at a flying school. She used that time to become the second woman in the United States to be certified as a commercial helicopter.

Then she went to Alaska and founded the first charter helicopter company in Alaska, which was very, very successful, taking people to oil fields and taking tourists to mountain climb. So that was another way to get around those restrictions. And the pilot I told you about before, who was such a big networker, ultimately wound up as the first woman vice president of US airline. It was Pan Am.

So they had had this fierceness forged in them in the war and I think wound up a large percentage of them doing much more interesting things than other women got to do based on this experience and their initial personalities, were not personalities of people who gave up easily.

Jonathan Thomas (48:08.472)
So if you could summarize what Hazel, Dorothy, Helen, and the others would want listeners today to understand about them, what would that be?

Becky Aikman (48:22.534)
I think they would want the recognition. I hope I'm giving it to them finally.

Becky Aikman (48:34.116)
I think that for them...

Flying meant so much. It was euphoric for them. At one point, Hazel, when she was a stunt pilot, said when she could make a plane dance in the sky, it gave her pure joy. They loved that freedom. They loved everything the sky represented to them. It represented freedom, challenge, even danger. Danger was part of the thrill.

They would want people to understand that it was important for them to pursue this and it gave them a lot. And I think as a result, they gave the world a lot.

Jonathan Thomas (49:19.394)
So now I'm gonna ask a nerdy question. From all your research and putting everything together, what's your favorite warbird? What's your favorite plane?

Becky Aikman (49:21.638)
Please.

Becky Aikman (49:30.02)
Well, I will have to go with the pilot's favorite, which was the Spitfire, hence the name of the book. Women pilots love the Spitfire. Everyone in England loved the Spitfire. It was credited with saving the country during the Battle of Britain. The Hurricane Fighter actually did very well, too, but there was a real romance to the Spitfire. It was a beautiful, sleek design, very aerodynamic.

Jonathan Thomas (49:37.176)
Yeah.

Jonathan Thomas (49:50.946)
Yeah.

Becky Aikman (49:58.426)
It was fast, it was powerful, it was so responsive. One of the pilots said, all you had to do was think about where you wanted to go, and it went there. They loved the sheer force that it had. Another one said, first time I flew one, I felt like I'd had a kick in the pants, and suddenly I was at 1,000 feet. So it gave them a lot of that pleasure that they got from flying in general. It was also, because it was so aerodynamic, it had a really narrow cockpit, which fit a woman's

figure better. So they felt like it was built for them. And one of my pilots said, you don't fly a Spitfire, you wear it.

Jonathan Thomas (50:29.934)
I'm

Jonathan Thomas (50:37.134)
I love that. you seen a Spitfire in flight? Have you had a chance to see one?

Becky Aikman (50:43.568)
I have not only in newsreels, I did however fly a Spitfire simulator at the little museum I've talked about in Maidenhead, England. It's called the Maidenhead Heritage Center if people want to visit it. And I performed very poorly.

Jonathan Thomas (51:01.262)
Well, I highly recommend seeing them in flight if you can. I've seen them a couple times, like through the Battle of Britain Memorial flight on flypast, and the noise is unmistakable. It's something to see.

Becky Aikman (51:13.872)
That was another thing they liked about it. Even though it had this sleek feminine design, it had this deep throbbing noise that it made that was really intimidating. And that was pleasing for the pilots too.

Jonathan Thomas (51:22.882)
Yeah. Well, well, and when you started, it has the flames coming out of the exhaust. It's definitely gets the blood flowing.

Becky Aikman (51:34.214)
I do have to go to one of those things. People tried to get me to go up in something. I have to say, I'm talking about how unbrave I am. I was just too terrified. I wasn't going up in some old aircraft when I had so much and heard so much about them crashing.

Jonathan Thomas (51:36.014)
You

Jonathan Thomas (51:48.194)
Yeah, there's companies in England that will do, you can do a Spitfire flight with a pilot and it's on my bucket list, but again, it's like $6,000 to do this. It's not cheap. Yeah. So my wife who doesn't want me to do it. So finally, for my last question, what do you hope our listeners and especially our female listeners will take away from Spitfires?

Becky Aikman (51:59.6)
watch you from the ground.

I get it.

Becky Aikman (52:17.37)
Well, first of all, I hope they enjoy it as a great story and they get some of the thoughts behind it.

was about to say something, I forgot it. You'll have to edit this. What was I going to say? It just went out of my head. Yeah. That's your big question.

Jonathan Thomas (52:32.002)
You're fine.

Jonathan Thomas (52:37.134)
That's the worst.

Jonathan Thomas (52:41.902)
Well, when you get it, we'll roll back to the question and then... Alright. Alright, so finally, for my last question, what do you hope our listeners, especially women, take away from your book Spitfires?

Becky Aikman (52:45.426)
Try the question again and maybe it will spur.

Becky Aikman (52:59.666)
Well, I do hope they enjoy the story, which is, think, a great story that has a lot to say for women. And one thing I always felt about it as I was working on it was how much today it's easy to think that women in an earlier time were humble, quiet, wanting to lead more limited lives. They were like women today in that they wanted it all. wanted to succeed in their ambitions.

they wanted to live the way they wanted to live without people telling them what to do and they succeeded. So I think it's very satisfying to see women from an earlier time living the way we still aspire to live now.

Jonathan Thomas (53:41.378)
Well, thank you so much for being on the Anglotopia podcast. That brings us to the end of our fascinating conversation with Becky with about the incredible story of the American women who helped fight the Battle of Britain from the cockpits of Spitfires, hurricanes, and so many other legendary aircraft. I want to thank Becky for sharing these remarkable stories of courage, determination, and trailblazing spirit. Spitfires, the American women who flew in the face of danger during World War II shines a spotlight on a

inspiring chapter of history that deserves to be remembered and celebrated. So the book is available now from Bloomsbury. It's not just a gripping wartime narrative. It's a powerful tribute to the women who dare to dream bigger and fly higher, even when the odds were stacked against them. If you enjoyed this episode of the Anglotopia podcast, please consider subscribing to the Anglotopia podcast, liking or reviewing us or joining the Friends of Anglotopia Club. You'll find out more information about our guests and links to the purchase Spitfires in the show notes.

Until next time, I'm Jonathan Thomas, and thank you for listening to the Anglotopia Podcast.

Becky Aikman (54:44.06)
Thank you, Jonathan.

Jonathan Thomas (54:45.324)
Thank you, Becky.