Spitfire Girl
Authors: Jackie Moggridge
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
An Invitation from the Publisher
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)
1920 | 1 March |
1935 | 1 |
1938 | 3 |
2 | |
1939 | 3 |
3 | |
1940 | 2 |
2 | |
1941 | A |
1944 | Joins Number 15 Ferry Pool stationed at Hamble. |
2 | |
2 | |
1945 | 1 |
8 | |
1946 | 1 |
2 | |
1949 | A |
1951 | 2 |
1953 | 2 |
2 | |
Campaigns to become first woman to break the sound barrier. The ‘powers that be’ would not lend her the Sabre Jet she needed in order for Britain to achieve this. | |
1954-56 | Spitfire flights to Burma. |
1957 | Memoir first published by Michael Joseph. |
1957-60 | Becomes first female airline Captain to fly passengers on scheduled flights whilst working for Channel Airways. |
1960 | Summer: Works for Meridian Air Maps in Scotland. |
1961 | 3 |
1967 | Pilots pleasure flights for tourists out of Weston-super-Mare. |
1969 | 2 |
1968-93 | Continues to fly professionally for various organisations, maintaining her Instrument Rating yearly in order to pilot passengers. |
1994 | 2 |
1997 | Reg Moggridge dies. |
2004 | 7 |
1 |