• Eleanor Lettice Curtis

Born in Devon (1915), Eleanor Lettice Curtis was educated at Benenden School and St. Hilda's College, Oxford. She learnt to fly at Yapton (Ford) in 1938 and joined the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) in the summer of 1940, remaining until it was disbanded in November 1945. During this time she graduated to flying all types of wartime aircraft and was the first of a dozen or so women to qualify to fly heavy bombers.

Post-war she spent her years as a technician and a flight test observer at A&AEE Boscombe Down and, later, as a Flight Development Engineer with Fairey Aviation where she flew the firm's communication aircraft. Both these occupations involved a great deal of flying and many overseas trips assessing aircraft performance in hot weather conditions. During this period she took an active part in air racing, flying various aircraft including her Wicko G-AFJB and a Vickers-Supermarine Spitfire XI. Flying the Spitfire XI, in 1948, Curtis was certified with the British women's record of the fastest time by an aeroplane (F.A.I Class 'C') over a 100 kilometre closed circuit course.

With the nationalisation of the aircraft industry in the sixties Curtis left Fairey for the Ministry of Aviation, working for a number of years on the initial planning of the joint civil/RAF Air Traffic Control Centre at West Drayton. Later, under the CAA she worked for the Flight Operations Directorate. Retiring from the CAA in 1976, she took a job with a firm supplying contractors to Sperry at Bracknell and in October 1992, she became the oldest British woman to obtain a helicopter's pilots licence. In her retirement she went onto prove her literary talent as she began to write extensively on aviation topics, publishing a number of articles alongside her autobiography and two acclaimed books: ‘The Forgotten Pilots’ and ‘Winged Odyssey: Mary, Duchess of Bedford’.
Lettice Curtis passed away in 2014 at the age of 99.