Amy Johnson

Amy Johnson was one of the most famous pilots of the 1930s. She became the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia, with a thermos flask beside her, and very rudimentary navigation instruments. She later made other epic journeys - from Siberia to Tokyo and London to Cape Town etc. She was brave and determined, but glamorous: she arrived after weeks of flying with grease on her face, and blisters from the sun, but had a penchant for Chanel clothes and Cartier diamonds, and painted her planes in her favourite colour of the moment. She was married to a Scottish playboy and fellow flyer, Jim Mollison, who was always getting drunk and crashing their plane. They moved in glamorous circles, became friends of Amelia Earhart's et al. After she tired of his endless infidelities, she divorced him and then took up motor racing, hang-gliding and newspaper journalism. She died in mysterious circumstances in a plane crash during WWII, and her story was in the papers again last year when someone claimed she had been shot down mistakenly by 'friendly fire.'