Being a Croydon boy, it’s
sometimes difficult to be proud of the place I was born and brought up, faced
with the obvious jokes and the ugly post war buildings. For its faults, of
which there are many, Croydon does have things to be proud of. For one, it
isn’t Carlisle. For another, in 1930 Croydon Airport was where Amy Johnson
began her solo flight to Australia, the first woman to do so. She used a second
hand de Havilland Gypsy Moth that she called Jason. After 19 days and a distance
of 11,000 miles she landed in Darwin, Northern Territory, successful. She
picked up a CBE for her trouble.
Jason had a happy retirement in
London’s Science Museum. In contrast, Amy went on to be the first pilot (with
Jack Humpreys) to fly to Moscow in less than 24 hours; ending the flight in
Japan and breaking another record in the process.
In 1932 she set a new record for
the fastest London to Cape Town flight. In doing so she broke the existing record,
belonging to the man who had proposed to her after knowing her for less than
eight hours. From then on, up to the outbreak of World War Two in 1939 she set
numerous flying records, often with her husband, all across the globe.
Johnson’s contribution to the war
effort saw her flying aircraft about the country so they were in the right
place at the right time. By the beginning of 1941 she was dead, having run out
of fuel in bad weather and ditching in the Thames estuary. She was seen alive
in the water by HMS Haslemere but in
the intense cold of British winter a rescuer from Haslemere died trying to reach Johnson, and her body was never
recovered.
For all that, Croydon celebrated
the heroine by naming ugly post war building close to East Croydon station
after her, before recently demolishing it.