Joan Lily Amelia Hughes A. T. A. MBE

[Phil Perry]

Remembering Joan Lily Amelia Hughes, MBE.

 

Joan was a WWII ferry pilot and one of Britain's first female test pilots.

 

Joan started flying training when she was fifteen. At that time, you could fly a plane at any age and so by 17 had she become the youngest qualified female pilot in Britain.

 

As an experienced aviator, Hughes was one of the first eight female pilots accepted into the Air Transport Auxiliary on January 1, 1940 and Hughes was the youngest female pilot to join the service.

 

Initially, Joan flew Tiger Moths from Hatfield Aerodrome, Hertfordshire and soon had more than 600 hours' experience ferrying aircraft around the country. Though small in stature, she ferried all types of aircraft including heavy four-engined bombers such as the Short Stirling. She became both a senior pilot and the only woman qualified to instruct on all types of military aircraft then in service.

Joan passed away in 1993, aged 75.

[Old Koreelah]

A gutsy generation.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Yes.. Self preservation brings out those traits...

Edited November 6, 2021 by Jerry_Atrick

[Phil Perry]

Thanks to the Nanny state, along with the dumbing down of society in general; I doubt we shall see their like in years to come. . . .

[facthunter]

Modern Society's desire/acceptance for/ short term pleasure seeking does enough by itself to limit individual achievement.in the majority.  There's still examples of outstanding work if one looks for it. How are you going Phil? Nev

[Phil Perry]

I'm fine Nev, thanks for asking.  I'm sorry if that last post seemed a little depressing !! . . . My good Lady and I are doing OK at the moment, I hope that you are too, notwithstanding the brilliance of various Government people and their weird ideas.

[Old Koreelah]

Not exactly aviation, but another gutsy woman; this one changed the world, but is unknown.

 

[onetrack]

What a fascinating woman and one with an amazing brain. She was essentially a highly gifted mathematician, who believed that a system could be devised to use the English language to programme and operate computers.

No-one believed it was possible. The "experts" said computers could only recognise mathematical symbols, and it would always need mathematicians to supply those symbols to computers, to make them compute.

But she devised her "compiler" which was the basis for the COBOL computer language, which is still in use today. COBOL enabled instructions typed in simple English to be used for complex computing and data processing.

 

I am amazed at how the brains of these gifted mathematicians work, they must be on the autism spectrum to be able to grasp such complex and deep processes which baffle any ordinary person.

Grace Hopper was not only an amazing mathematician, she was a Professor who taught advanced mathematics, she was rapidly recognised by the Govt for her advanced skills, and she also joined the U.S. Navy and became a Rear Admiral.

 

https://news.yale.edu/2019/03/26/math-not-computer-science-was-grace-hoppers-first-language

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper

[onetrack]

One would wonder why the Navy would need mathematicians. But computing the trajectory of bullets from big guns - and missiles and rockets in todays age - is critical to ensuring your armaments hit where they are supposed to hit.

 

A good mate was an artilleryman during the Vietnam War, and he was chosen to join the artillery because he was a whizz at maths.

What surprised me, was when he told me when they were firing artillery pieces, they had to calculate the movement of the rotation of the Earth, as part of the trajectory calculations. 

 

This bloke is a human computer, he could regularly make serious amounts of money betting on neddies, because he would study every single item of information on the neddies race histories, and mentally compute the chances of any particular neddy winning.

But he gave up betting on neddies, because he reckoned it was too easy to become too obsessed with it, and with winning. I've seen him win as much as $2800 on a single race. 

 

More on Grace Hopper - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38677721