Joy Lofthouse (14 February 1923 – 15 November 2017) was a British pilot having joined the

Air Transport Auxiliary The Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) was a British civilian organisation set up at the start of the Second World War with headquarters at White Waltham Airfield in Berkshire. The ATA ferried new, repaired and damaged military aircraft between factori ...

(ATA) as an ''ab initio'' pilot in December 1943. She went on to fly

Spitfires The Supermarine Spitfire is a British single-seat fighter aircraft used by the Royal Air Force and other Allied countries before, during, and after World War II. Many variants of the Spitfire were built, from the Mk 1 to the Rolls-Royce Griff ...

and bombers for the Air Transport Auxiliary, and was one of only 168 "Attagirls" who served.

Early life

Lofthouse was born Joyce Gough, but was always known as Joy, in

Cirencester Cirencester (, ; see below for more variations) is a market town in Gloucestershire, England, west of London. Cirencester lies on the River Churn, a tributary of the River Thames, and is the largest town in the Cotswolds. It is the home of ...

and grew up in

South Cerney South Cerney is a village and civil parish in the Cotswold district of Gloucestershire, 3 miles south of Cirencester and close to the border with Wiltshire. It had a population of 3,074 according to the 2001 census, increasing to 3,464 at the ...

, both in Gloucestershire.

Career

In 1943, 20-year-old Lofthouse and her elder sister Yvonne joined the

, after they saw an ad in a magazine which was seeking women to learn how to fly. Only 17 out of 2,000 applicants were accepted, including Joy, who had never even driven a car, and Yvonne. She was one of a total of 168 women who were members of the Air Transport Auxiliary. Her job was to deliver aircraft from the factories where they were made to the airfields where they were to be flown from by

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...

(RAF) pilots. Lofthouse was able to fly 38 different types of aircraft. During the war, they were based at

White Waltham White Waltham is a village and civil parish, west of Maidenhead, in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire, England. It is crossed briefly by the M4 motorway, which along with the Great Western Main Line and all other roa ...

, in Berkshire. After World War II, she became a teacher. In May 2015, Lofthouse flew a Spitfire for the first time in over 70 years, to commemorate

VE Day Victory in Europe Day is the day celebrating the formal acceptance by the Allies of World War II of Germany's unconditional surrender of its armed forces on Tuesday, 8 May 1945, marking the official end of World War II in Europe in the Easter ...

. She said, "It was the iconic plane, the Spitfire lasted much longer than he Hurricanebecause it was such a wonderful aeroplane, I think.

t is T, or t, is the twentieth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''tee'' (pronounced ), plural ''tees''. It is deri ...

the nearest thing to having wings of your own and flying."

Personal life

She was married twice and had three children. Her second marriage was to Charles Lofthouse, himself a

(RAF) pilot, and they were married for 30 years until his death in 2002 at the age of 80. She died in November 2017, at the age of 94. Before she died, Lofthouse was one of the two surviving World War Two "Spitfire Girls".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lofthouse, Joy 1923 births 2017 deaths British women in World War II Air Transport Auxiliary pilots British women aviators People from South Cerney