Dorothy Spicer

Dorothy Spicer (born July 31, 1908 in Hadley Wood , England , † December 23, 1946 in Brazil ) was a British aviator and aeronautical engineer . In 1935 she was the first woman to receive the Top D license in aircraft construction and was the first woman in the world to acquire all four licenses from the Ministry of Aviation for Aircraft Technology .

life and work

Spicer was the only daughter of the stockbroker Norman Spicer and his wife Hilda Mary Sisterson. She attended the Godolphin School in Brussels and studied at University College London . In 1929 she learned to fly at the London Airplane Club at Stag Lane Aerodrome . Here she met Pauline Gower , who was studying for her professional pilot's license and who became her friend. In 1931 she started a business with her, settled in Hunstanton , Norfolk , and offered rides to tourists. After gaining technical qualifications, they ran an aircraft repair facility on Hayling Island . In 1933, Spicer took part in 200 flight demonstrations to raise funds for British hospitals. At the end of the 1933 flying season, she settled in Cowes and began a six-month practical and theoretical training at the Saunders-Roe works. There she learned how to upgrade and design airframes . She was studying for the B engineering license during this time, although the facilities offering advanced courses were limited to men. She was the first woman in the world to earn her B license. From 1934 to 1935 she worked as the only female engineer at Napier in London and then at Cirrus-Hermes in Brough . There she received her "D" Ground Engineer's License. Again she was the only woman who studied among several hundred men. She was the first woman in the world to hold all four of the Aeronautical Department's Ground Engineering licenses. The D license qualified them for the certification of engines after repair and overhaul. In 1936 she became chief engineer at Tom Campbell Black's Air Display. In 1938 she married the flight lieutenant Richard Pearse, with whom she had a daughter in 1939. She was then appointed to a technical position at the Aviation Department in Farnborough in 1938. This was exceptional as in the 1930s women were expected to quit their jobs after they got married. In 1940 she worked as an aerial observer and research assistant and was involved in the development of a large number of new types of aircraft and pieces of equipment. After the war, her husband became the South American representative for British Aviation Services (now: Britavia ) in Rio de Janeiro . On the way there, she and her husband died in 1946 in a commercial airplane that crashed in thick fog near a mountain 16 km from Rio de Janeiro Airport. She was a founding member of the Society of Licensed Aircraft Engineers (SLAE), which launched a Dorothy Spicer Memorial Award in her honor. With Pauline Gower she wrote the book Women With Wings (1938), to which the pilot Amy Johnson wrote the foreword.

literature

• Evelyn Zegenhagen: "Dashing German girls": female pilots between 1918 and 1945, Wallstein Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3835301795 .
• Henrietta Heald: Magnificent Women and their Revolutionary Machines, 2019, ISBN 978-1783526604 .

Web links

• biography
• Short biography
• Photos and excerpts from "Women with Wings"
• Great news as the Dorothy Spicer Memorial Award is revived