The inspiring memoir of the remarkable Jackie Moggridge: ATA girl, Spitfire expert and pioneer. 'We had returned to a different world. We had taken off in peace at nine-thirty and landed in war at noon.' Jackie Moggridge was just nineteen when World War Two broke out. Determined to do her bit, she joined the Air Transport Auxiliary. Ferrying aircraft from factory to frontline was dangerous work, but there was also fun, friendship and even love in the air. At last the world was opening up to women... or at least it seemed to be. From her first flight at fifteen to smuggling Spitfires into Burma, Jackie describes the trials and tribulations, successes and frustrations of her life in the sky. What Amazon readers are saying about Spitfire Girl : 'There is something for everyone in this remarkable autobiography, adventure, romance, flight, struggle, victory. Must read! ' 5* 'An amazing book by an inspirational woman ' 5* 'Drama, aircraft, relationships... it's all there in this great page-turner !' 5* 'I am left with real admiration for Jackie Moggridge, truly an amazing lady ' 5* 'Brilliant book. What an amazing women she was' 5*. Jackie Moggridge joined the ATA during WW2, receiving a King's Commendation for Services in the Air. After the war she continued to fly professionally whilst raising her two daughters. She died in 2004; her ashes were scattered from a Spitfire. Spitfire Girl By Jackie Moggridge Head of Zeus Ltd Copyright © 1957 Jackie Moggridge All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-78185-989-6 Contents Cover, Welcome Page, Epigraph, Introduction, Key Events in Jackie's Life, Part 1: Pre-war, Part 2: War, Part 3: Post-war, Part 4: Desert interlude, Epilogue, Afterword, Picture section, Appendix A, Postscript, About this Book, About the Author, An Invitation from the Publisher, Copyright, CHAPTER 1 Six months before I was born my widowed mother and I moved to my grandmother's home. Six months after I was born my mother re-married. My grandmother, old-fashioned and strong-willed, was determined that I should not leave her orthodox Catholic home and influence. It is not difficult to imagine the arguments and promises that centred over my sublimely indifferent head like a tropical storm thundering high in the heavens over a placid lake, but when my mother moved to her new home in Durban I stayed at Pretoria with my grandmother. The results were inevitable. I adapted myself, and was adapted, to an elderly woman. My behaviour, habits and interests were those calculated to make her happy. I was quiet, reserved and serious except when surrounded by octogenarians. My grandmother's firm belief in the Roman Catholic version of faith was a deep-water harbour in which I moored without once slipping the anchor and venturing outside the harbour gates. To her it was a living philosophy to which she referred even on the most trivial matters. In her generation it was simpler to have only black and white. She, and I, were untrammelled by the greys of modem psychology, where, the point of sin and misdemeanour is counter-pointed by environment and hereditary influence. For her, and me, this was right, that, unquestionably, was wrong. Admirable in a grandmother. Insufferable in a grand-daughter. Thus when I was fourteen and my grandmother died I was a prig and a prude and ill-fitted to return to my mother's home and the extravagant high spirits of my two step-brothers. Reviewing my life it seemed inevitable that I would fly, though, looking back, I cannot choose the precise moment and say that was when I was committed to the sky. Perhaps this was it: 'Sissy.' 'Baaaby.' 'Cry Baby.' 'You wait!' I cried, 'I'll show you.' 'Showing' my step-brothers was an empty gesture. I had been showing them for months but they refused to be impressed. Still fuming I left their calumny, jumped on my bike and rode out of Pretoria. Calmer, I stopped on the dusty road that bordered Swartkop military aerodrome, leaned my bike against the fence and gazed pensively. Aircraft, the sun ricocheting sharply from their windscreens, rose gracefully and effortlessly into the sky. No longer pensive I cycled nearer to the hangars, parked my bike against a 'Trespassers will be Prosecuted' sign and looked closely at the pilots and pilots-to-be. I watched them until the last aircraft landed, the hangar doors closed and quiet returned to the aerodrome. Riding home I wondered about the pilots. They seemed perfectly normal. Their hands into which they placed their lives were as mine. They had laughed and gestured ordinarily; oblivious of the courage, nobility and many other virtues that my admiration lavished upon them. After I had been told off for being late for tea I announced that I was going to be a pilot. 'Yah! You couldn't fly for toffee.' It went on like this until, over my fifteenth birthday breakfast, my mother, entirely hoodwinked by my unwary and apocryphal affection for flying,