Diana Barnato Walker
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Diana Barnato Walker MBE FRAeS (15 January 1918 - 28 April 2008) was an English aviator and horse rider, the first British woman to break the sound barrier.[1]
Her father was the famous car racing driver Woolf Barnato who was Chairman of Bentley Motors and also a leading member of their racing team. Diana was a 1936 debutante at the age of 18, meeting King Edward VIII at Buckingham Palace.
From an early age, she became interested in aircraft and at age 20 she decided to become a pilot. Her initial training was in Tiger Moths at the Brooklands Flying Club, the airfield being located within the famous car racing circuit in Surrey. She showed a natural aptitude for flying and made her first solo flight after only six hours of dual instruction. Soon after the outbreak of World War II Diana volunteered to become a Red Cross nurse. In 1940 she was serving as a nurse in France before the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk and later drove ambulances in London during the Blitz.
In early 1941 she applied to become one of the first women pilots of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) and successfully took her initial assessment flying test at their headquarters at White Waltham, Berkshire, on 9 March 1941 with the ATA's Chief Flying Instructor, A.R.O. Macmillan, in the Tiger Moth's rear seat.
Diana was admitted to the ATA's Elementary Flying Training School at White Waltham on 2 November 1941. After a lengthy period of intensive flight instruction and tests in primary training aircraft, she joined her first ATA Ferry Pool (FP), No.15 FP at RAF Hamble Hants, on 9 May 1942. She soon began to deliver low-powered single engine aircraft from factory or repair base to storage units and RAF and Naval flying units.
Further advanced training permitted her to deliver several hundred Spitfires, Hurricanes, Tempests and other high performance fighter aircraft. She then became eligible to train on twin-engined aircraft and delivered Blenheims, Mosquitos, Mitchells and Wellingtons, normally flying solo when doing so. She continued intensive flying with the ATA until the organisation was disbanded in late 1945. By that time she had flown 80 types of aircraft and had delivered 260 Spitfires..
After the death of her fiancee, Squadron Leader Humphrey Gilbert, at the controls of his Spitfire (he was taking a local WAAF for a joy ride),[1] Diana married Wing Commander Derek Ronald Walker RAF on 6 May 1944, the ceremony being attended by numerous RAF and ATA friends of the bride and groom. Derek Walker continued active flying operations until he was killed on 14 November 1945 in bad weather whilst flying a North American Mustang fighter between two UK airfields. She vowed never to marry again, and became the lover of married English-based American pilot Whitney Straight, who like her father had been a pre-war champion racing driver - the couple had a son Barney Barnato in 1947, and having never asked Straight to leave his wife, her only comment was: "I was perfectly content. I had my own identity."[1]
After the war's end, Diana continued to fly and gained her commercial flying licence. For many years she was a volunteer pilot with the Women's Junior Air Corps (WJAC), later the Girls' Venture Corps, giving flights to air-minded teenage girls to encourage them to enter the aviation industry. In July 1948, an aircraft that she was flying burst into flames at near White Waltham. Rather than bale out and lose the WJAC’s aircraft, she switch off the fuel and glided the aircraft back.
On 26 August 1963 she flew a English Electric Lightning T4 to Mach 1.65 (more than 1,000 mph) after convincing the Air Minister to let her fly it with Squadron Leader Ken Goodwin as her check pilot[2] and so she became the first British woman to break the sound barrier. She also established by this flight a world air speed record for women. Shortly after her record-breaking flight, she was diagnosed as having cancer and she had three operations.
Diana Barnato Walker was awarded the MBE in 1965 for services to aviation, and was a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society. She died on April 28, 2008, aged 90.
[edit] References
- Spreading My Wings, Diana Barnato Walker, 1994, Patrick Stephens, ISBN 1-85260-473-5
