Nancy Jane Miller Livingston Stratford (born June 12, 1919) is an American aviator. She flew warplanes in the civilian

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 ...

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

and was later a pioneering helicopter pilot in

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...

Early life

She was born Nancy Jane Miller in Los Angeles on 12 June 1919. She flew for the first time at sixteen when her brother took her on a sightseeing flight over

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

. She was enchanted with flying and began studying aviation at

Oakland Airport Oakland International Airport is an international airport in Oakland, California, United States, 10 miles (16 km) south of downtown located in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is owned by the Port of Oakland and has domestic passenger f ...

in 1939.

Career

In 1942 she joined the civilian

(ATA), ferrying warplanes around Great Britain to supply the

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 ...

. She logged around 900 hours of flying and gained experience on about 50 different types of aircraft, claiming that her favorite was the

Supermarine Spitfire 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 Grif ...

. Returning from the war, she had trouble finding employment in the traditionally male-dominated field. In 1947 she found work with a commercial service in Oregon where she flew, taught, and did bookkeeping. The same year she earned

seaplane A seaplane is a powered fixed-wing aircraft capable of takeoff, taking off and water landing, landing (alighting) on water.Gunston, "The Cambridge Aerospace Dictionary", 2009. Seaplanes are usually divided into two categories based on their tec ...

and

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...

certifications, becoming only the fourth woman in the world licensed to fly helicopters. In 1960 she became the first woman helicopter operator in

when she and her husband, Arlo Livingston, founded Livingston Copters near

Juneau The City and Borough of Juneau, more commonly known simply as Juneau ( ; tli, Dzánti K'ihéeni ), is the capital city of the state of Alaska. Located in the Gastineau Channel and the Alaskan panhandle, it is a unified municipality and the se ...

. Among her passengers was mountaineer

Edmund Hillary Sir Edmund Percival Hillary (20 July 1919 – 11 January 2008) was a New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist. On 29 May 1953, Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers confirmed to have reached t ...

, whom she flew to Alaska's

Mendenhall Glacier Mendenhall Glacier (in Tlingit language “Sít”) is a glacier about long located in Mendenhall Valley, about from downtown Juneau in the southeast area of the U.S. state of Alaska. The glacier and surrounding landscape is protected as part ...

in 1963. The business still operates, as NorthStar Helicopters. In 1970 she was forced to give up her pilot's license due to deafness.

Later life

In 1978, she and her husband sold their helicopter business and moved to Washington. After Arlo Livingston died in 1986, Stratford reconnected with a man to whom she'd been engaged during the war, Milton Stratford. The two married in 1992 and moved to San Diego. Milton died in 2008. In 2013, encouraged by her niece Peg Miller, she published a memoir titled ''Contact! Britain!: A Woman Ferry Pilot's Story During WWII in England''. Upon the death of

Jaye Edwards Stella "Jaye" Edwards (12 October 1918 – 15 August 2022) was a British aviator. Edwards, who was nicknamed "Jaye" and "Pete", flew Royal Air Force warplanes for the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) during World War II. Early life She was born Ste ...

in August 2022, Stratford became the last surviving Attagirl, as the women pilots of the ATA were known.

Honors

In 2008 she was presented with an Air Transport Auxiliary Veterans Badge by British prime minister

Gordon Brown James Gordon Brown (born 20 February 1951) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010. He previously served as Chance ...

. In 2015 she was recognized as an Alaskan Aviation Legend by the Alaska Air Carriers Association.

Early life

Career

Later life

Honors

References

Further reading