Two Women Pioneers of Aviation

This is the story of two women who lived in Finchley Road and who made headlines in the early years of aviation. Amy Johnson is the best-known but Grace Drummond-Hay also had a very interesting career.

Lady Grace Drummond-Hay

In 1929 Lady Grace Drummond-Hay was the first woman to fly round the world in a Zeppelin airship. Born Grace Marguerite Lethbridge in Toxteth Liverpool on 12 Sept 1895, she was brought up in the West Hampstead area. Her father Sidney Thomas Lethbridge was the managing director and later chairman of Spratt’s, the firm that made dog biscuits and animal food. The Lethbridge family lived at several local addresses; 28 Kingdon Road (1901 to at least 1904), 11 Lydford Road off Willesden Lane (1911), and then at 14 Avenue Mansions, Finchley Road from about 1918 until Sidney’s death there in 1937. 

Lady Drummond Hay

In Hampstead on 9 June 1920 aged 25, Grace Lethbridge married the diplomat Sir Robert Hay Drummond-Hay, who was nearly 50 years older than her. He died in October 1926 at 34 Nottingham Place, Regents Park, and left Grace £12,430 (today worth about £775,000). As Lady Grace Drummond-Hay she began to work as a journalist and travel writer, first in England and then for the Hearst newspaper group in America. She interviewed leading figures such as Mussolini, Mahatma Gandhi and Herman Goering.

In 1926 she met Karl Henry von Wiegand, the chief overseas reporter for Hearst. Although he was married with a family, they became lovers. Born in Hessen Germany in 1874, Karl’s family emigrated to American when he was a child. In October 1928 Grace and Karl travelled on the maiden intercontinental flight of the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin from Germany to America. During the flight the airship was hit by a storm. Crockery crashed off the tables and damage to the fin section had to be repaired in mid-Atlantic.

The following year Hearst co-funded the round the world flight of the Graf Zeppelin and Grace and Karl were the main reporters for Hearst newspapers. The airship took off from Lakehurst in New Jersey in August 1929 and returned 21 days later after circumnavigating the world with stops in Germany, Tokyo and Los Angeles. Grace gained huge publicity as the only woman on board. There are two short films of the airship’s arrival in New York on Pathe News. In May 1936 she was on the Hindenburg’s maiden flight from Germany to America, followed by lecture tours of the US.

Grace at the wheel of a Zeppelin

At the beginning of the 1930’s she learned to fly and gained her pilot licence. In 1932 Grace was at No.116 Finchley Road, before moving further up the road to No.23 Mandeville Court where she lived from 1935 to 1939. During WWII she worked as a reporter with Karl in China and Ethiopia where Emperor Haile Selassie presented her with a valuable jewel. Karl and Grace were in the Philippines when the Japanese invaded on 2 January 1942 and his sight was badly damaged from a bomb blast. After a period of house arrest, they were interned in Santo Tomas and other Japanese prison camps for almost two years. With 1,500 other people they returned to New York on 1 December 1943 on the Swedish ship the SS Gripsholm.

Karl and Grace working on the SS Gripsholm

After recuperating from their ordeal, Grace and Karl continued to work as reporters in Spain and Portugal until the end of 1945. They returned to America where Grace died suddenly of a heart attack in the Lexington Hotel in New York on 12 Feb 1946. Her ashes were returned to England by Karl von Wiegand.

In August 1991 her account of the 1928 Zeppelin flight across the Atlantic and other memorabilia were put up for auction at Christie’s and sold for £6,413.

A recent film was made of the 1929 round the world flight. Called ‘Farewell’ it was made by the Dutch director Ditteke Mensink and researched by Gerard Nijssen. It uses fascinating documentary film of the Zeppelin trip including shots of Grace and Karl, but the narrative voiced by English actress Poppy Elliott, is a fictional and romantic account supposedly taken from a diary written by Grace which does not exist. In 2010 it was shown on BBC4 as ‘Around The World By Zeppelin’. The complete 80 mins film can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4jq7oRxw-g

For a discussion about the film see the blog:

http://www.airships.net/blog/movie-lady-hay-graf-zeppelin-farewell/

The British airship R101, crashed in Northern France on 5 October 1930 on its maiden flight from Cardington in Bedfordshire to Karachi in India. Sir Sefton Brancker, the Director of Civil Aviation, was one of the 48 people who died of the 54 on board. He was a friend of Amy Johnston. On 6 May 1937 the LZ129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed as it docked in Lakehurst, New Jersey, 35 of the 97 people on board died. The two sensational disasters effectively ended the future of airships. Pathe News has films of both airships; the footage showing the Hindenburg crashing in flames is particularly harrowing.

Amy Johnson

Born in 1903 in Hull and educated at Sheffield University, Amy Johnson moved to London in 1927. After working at the Peter Jones department store in Chelsea she became a typist at a City law firm. Her spare time was devoted to her passion for flying. In April 1928, she joined the London Aeroplane Club at Stag Lane, Hendon and by the end of 1929 she was the first woman to get a engineer’s certificate from the Air Ministry. The same year she received her pilot’s licence and became friends with the popular actor and comedian Will Hay. He was obsessed with flying and had a plane at Stag Lane. Amy’s father, a major herring importer in Hull, supported his daughter financially and she was able to leave the law firm to concentrate on flying.

Amy briefly rented a room at West End Mansions 315 West End Lane and later shared a room at 24 Castellain Road, Maida Vale. When she obtained her pilot’s licence she was living at 2 Brentmead Place, Golders Green, close to today’s Brent Cross. In November 1930 she moved to Flat 15 in the newly-built Vernon Court at the junction of the Hendon Way and Finchley Road, (which today has a blue plaque to commemorate her).

Amy Johnson in Jason

On 5 May 1930, after less than 100 hours’ solo flying, Amy set out from Croydon in her two-year-old Gipsy Moth, Jason. She was attempting to fly from England to Australia and break Squadron Leader Hinkler’s 1928 record of fifteen and a half days. On 10 May she was still two days ahead of Hinkler’s time when she arrived at Karachi, India, even though bad weather had forced her to land for two hours in the desert. After reaching Calcutta Amy hoped to fly non-stop to Rangoon and on to Singapore but was delayed at Rangoon and then again in Java by bad weather, shortages of fuel and damage to the plane. Finally, having landed at Port Darwin, Australia, after nineteen and a half days, ‘Johnnie’ was given a tumultuous reception despite missing the record. Her flight aroused widespread enthusiasm: congratulations came from King George V and she was appointed CBE. The press dubbed her ‘The Queen of the Air’ and the Daily Mail made her a gift of £10,000. A very private person, Amy found all the press and public adulation embarrassing.

 

Jim Mollison and Amy in happy times

In Australia she met the handsome Jim Mollison, a record-breaking aviator. This was the beginning of their romance and they married on 29 July 1932. Amy left Vernon Court, and the couple lived first at the Dorchester Hotel and then the Grosvenor Hotel. In 1934 they became the first husband and wife team to cross the Atlantic westbound and in 1936 Amy broke the Cape Town speed record. But the marriage was already foundering, as Jim drank heavily and enjoyed his playboy image and constant womanizing. Amy was granted a divorce in February 1938 on the grounds of Mollison’s adultery. Pathe News has several short films of Amy, recording her famous flights, some showing her with husband Jim Mollison. Jason is on display at the Science Museum.

In 1939 Amy was the author of Skyroads of the World but by this time she was beginning to move out of the limelight. During WWII, in March 1940 her friend Pauline Gower asked Amy to join the select Air Transport Auxiliary. In this role she shuttled planes back and forth from Hatfield, near the ATA base at White Waltham, to Prestwick. On a routine flight on 5 January 1941, she encountered difficulties in poor weather conditions and fog, and is believed to have drowned after bailing out over the Thames estuary. She was aged only 37, her body was never recovered and there are several versions of the events that led to her plane plunging into the sea. Her death remains a mystery. In 1941 a film based on some of the flights by Jim Mollison and Amy Johnson called They Flew Alone was made, starring Robert Newton and Anna Neagle.

Here is a 10 mins contemporary film about Amy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZRg6bPJ8jE

The two women were role models in the 1920s and 30s when men dominated the world of aviation.