Jackie Moggridge

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Jackie Moggridge (born March 1, 1922 in Pretoria , South Africa , † January 7, 2004 in Taunton , England ) was a British aviator who served as a pilot with the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) and later with the Royal Air Force during World War II Voluntary Reserves flew. She was the first woman to do a skydive in South Africa and the first female flight captain .

life and work

Moggridge was born in South Africa as Dolores Theresa Sorour and named herself Jackie after her sports hero Jackie Rissik. She received her A-license when she was 15, and when she was 17 she was the first woman to do a skydive in South Africa. In 1938 she moved to Great Britain to get her B-license at Aeronautical College in Witney near Oxford . She joined the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and worked in a radar station in Rye until she switched to the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA). Pauline Gower recruited her into the ATA in 1940. She joined the Hatfield Ferry Pool and was the youngest of the female pilots. The ATA was closed in 1945 after the end of the war and in the same year she married the Army Captain Moggridge, with whom she had two daughters. Between 1947 and 1949 she was active in the local theater and opera company of Taunton and organized benefit concert parties. In the early 1950s she received her commercial license to fly at Southend-on-Sea . In 1957, the refrigerator company LEC Refrigeration owned a private airfield in Bognor Regis, Sussex, and an Avro Anson that served as an executive aircraft and airborne salesroom. Demonstration models of the refrigerators were kept on board and flown overseas for potential customers to see. She flew to South Africa as co-pilot with George Farley as pilot, with a sales trip lasting several weeks. She then flew for Channel Airways based at Southend Airport. Because she had an exemplary flight security record, she was hired despite her gender. After having proven itself on the Isle of Wight route, it was used on the Jersey and Guernsey routes. Passengers often mistakenly assumed she was the stewardess or taxi driver. Her duties also included picking up resident passengers from their homes and driving them to Portsmouth Airport . Channel Airways used an old London taxi for this service, and the stunned passengers later saw her again as a pilot after the drive. She was the first female airline captain to fly passengers on scheduled flights when she joined Channel Airways. On April 29, 1994 Carolyn Grace gave her the opportunity to repeat a transfer flight that had been carried out exactly 50 years earlier. During the war she had been the first female pilot to fly the same Spitfire from Castle Bromwich to Selsey, where there was a New Zealand squadron. She took a seat in the rear seat of the ML407 and - piloted by Carolyn Grace - took off again with "her" Spitfire. She died in 2004 and her ashes were scattered over Blackdown Hills from the Spitfire (ML407) piloted by Carolyn Grace .

Honors

During World War II, Moggridge flew Lancasters , Spitfires, and a host of other aircraft as an RAF pilot . She flew over 1500 planes, more than any other ATA pilot. It logged over 4,000 hours of flight time over Europe, North Africa and the Middle East . She was a member of a very elite group and one of only five women who were awarded Royal Airforce Wings during the war. She received a Royal Commendation and a War Award from then Prime Minister Clement Attlee for her work during the war . In 1959 she was awarded the Jean Lennox Bird Trophy by the British Women Pilots' Association. In her honor, the Jackie Moggridge Cup is awarded annually to a British female pilot for outstanding qualifications. The city of Taunton, in which she had lived for 57 years, honored her with the naming of a street, the "Jackie Moggridge Way".

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personal data
SURNAME Moggridge, Jackie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sorour, Dolores Theresa
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British pilot
DATE OF BIRTH March 1, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Pretoria , South Africa
DATE OF DEATH January 7, 2004
Place of death Taunton , England