A Spitfire Girl by Mary Ellis

Author:Mary Ellis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 2016-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Life and Death

One particular narrow miss in a Spitfire which scared the life out of me took place in the autumn of 1942. It involved my close friend, a married woman, First Officer Dora Lang. I hadn’t been flying Spitfires for very long but our chitties on this particular day required the two of us to deliver P1 (Priority 1) Spitfires to the same airfield. We had taken off from Chattis Hill near Southampton at around the same time and the visibility was absolutely atrocious – we knew this, but had both elected to fly.

I lost sight of Dora because of the terrible fog and although we were always advised to put down in adverse weather conditions I went all out to make my P1 delivery. You can imagine I was overjoyed when I spotted a hangar looming up out of the mist near Wroughton airfield close to Swindon.

Dora had also spotted it at the same time. I had just landed and was on the runway when something shot by me going in the opposite direction at the same level. Eek! Dora, flying her Spitfire, had whisked past me on the same runway. It was a miracle – an absolute miracle – that we didn’t collide. The wing-tips on both aircraft must have been an inch apart. The embarrassment was caused by the very bad visibility as one of us had landed from the wrong direction. Fortunately, we had observed the first rule of landing and that is to keep the left of the runway. And that rule is what saved us. We were both lucky not to have been killed that day.

On 3 November 1942, Dora wrote in my autograph book a poem and had a drawn a picture of a Spitfire. Firstly, she wrote: ‘Enjoy the sky, Possess the field of air, Cloud be your step, the west wind be your stair’. Dora then added in the corner of the page, ‘And the next time we land on the same aerodrome, on the same runway, at the same moment, may we be going in the same direction!’

It was a deeply upsetting time for all of us when, on 2 March 1944, Dora and Flight Engineer Janice Harrington were killed when the Mosquito Mk.VI that they were flying crashed and burst into flames at Lasham airfield, near Alton, Hampshire.

It was hard to believe when I heard the news; all sorts of memories of Dora and little Janice flooded my mind. I recalled the conversations we’d had, the meals we’d shared. One minute they were there and now they’d gone. It was a shocking reminder that death was never far away, especially when flying aircraft. I was upset of course to lose such dear friends, especially Dora who I saw nearly every day as she was in the same billet at Bursledon. Our CO, Margot, told me to come to work but take a day off from flying.

Dora’s death was a bad shock, not only for me, but our ATA colleague First Officer Anne Walker who was also a great friend of hers.

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