
WW2 Spitfire Pilot Mary Ellis Dies - DanBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44962253
======
mastazi
"Up in the air on your own and you can do whatever you like. I flew 400
Spitfires and occasionally I would take one up and go and play with the
clouds, which was so delightful and lovely, I can't tell you how wonderful it
was"

(From the video embedded in the article)

~~~
sohkamyung
I found the segment in the video where she recounts an encounter with a German
plane while flying, and attempts to wave it away (shoo!) to be hilarious.

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toomanybeersies
I would recommend for any HN user that hasn't done it before, to go and fly a
plane.

There's something so surreal about flying, having the freedom to move across 4
axes (and more if you fly a helicopter), compared to the two that your car
gives you.

Getting up in an aerobatic plane is even more fun. The feeling when you're in
the middle of a barrel roll, pulling 1 G so you still feel stuck to the seat,
but when you look outside everything is upside down, it's amazing.

~~~
Retric
Airplanes are generally considered to have 3 degrees of freedom: Pitch
(elevators and or ailerons), yaw (Rudder), roll(ailerons).

Speed can increase lift but so that might count, but pulling back on the stick
does the same thing as moving the wheel to adjust elevator trim.

~~~
barrkel
6 kinds of freedom: rotation for all 3 axes, and change in velocity along each
of the 3 axes.

Cars have two kinds: steering and change in speed. Planes have about 4: pitch,
yaw, roll and thrust.

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justin66
One quote really put her age in perspective: "Older than the RAF by one year."
Remarkable.

------
gadders
Dan Snow, the historian behind the History Hit Podcast coincidentally
interviewed her last week. You can get a link to the podcast here:
[https://www.historyhit.com/podcasts/](https://www.historyhit.com/podcasts/)

Quite a lady and a sad loss.

------
trhway
from the obituary at [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-
hampshire-43518517](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-43518517)
:

The work was "exhilarating and sometimes very dangerous", she recalled. Pilots
often flew unfamiliar aircraft, guided by the "Ferry Pilots notes", which gave
landing instructions.

"We'd say to each other, 'Oh look what I've got, look what I've got'. And that
was terribly exciting. Sometimes frightening as well because the aeroplanes
were all different. You'd get out of a Tiger Moth into a Wellington bomber and
then into a Spitfire."

Based at an all-women's ATA pool in Hamble, Hampshire, she recalled that she
flew "about 1,000" aircraft during the war including 76 different types.

Mary Ellis came close to death on several occasions.

She was shot at over Bournemouth, possibly by friendly fire, and had a near-
miss as she landed in fog at the same time as another Spitfire coming in the
opposite direction.

She also survived a crash-landing when the undercarriage on her Spitfire
jammed, causing the engine to overheat.

~~~
sohkamyung
> She also survived a crash-landing when the undercarriage on her Spitfire
> jammed, causing the engine to overheat.

That is interesting. How is the undercarriage and engine of a Spitfire linked
together, such that jamming the undercarriage could cause the engine to
overheat?

~~~
lostlogin
It must involve airflow to the radiator but it’s hard to see how when you look
at pictures, though some models have intakes that could possibly get blocked.

[https://www.quora.com/World-War-2-What-was-that-box-under-
th...](https://www.quora.com/World-War-2-What-was-that-box-under-the-wing-of-
some-Supermarine-Spitfire-models)

It’s quite tricky to Google as there are simulators that have users
experiencing problems with overheating Spitfires.

~~~
jabl
Indeed, if the wheels are stuck half open, they disturb the airflow to the
radiators. Radiators where of course as small as possible [1], since they
cause a lot of drag.

[1] They also used pressurized glycol-water cooling, coolant temp was
something like 135 degC, allowing a smaller radiator than atmospheric pressure
water.

~~~
mnw21cam
On the contrary, the radiator on the spitfire could actually provide positive
thrust, simply because it took in cold air at the front and put out hot air at
the back.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meredith_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meredith_effect)

~~~
jabl
Well, yes, but for the same engine with the same waste heat removal, a bigger
radiator doesn't help. It would be worse, actually, since you have the larger
drag, and the Meredith effect would also be smaller since you'd have a larger
volume of air passing through, but heated less.

------
phobosdeimos
Its amazing what war can do to equal rights. Britain had the planes but it was
short on pilots- the battle of Britain was a war of attrition.

~~~
WalterBright
WW2 military planes were at the limits of a man's strength. Flying those
airplanes in combat or in an emergency is very physical.

For example, a B-17 could fly with only one outboard engine running. But the
pilot could barely hold the rudder in position to do it, and would trade off
with the copilot. Women don't have the lower body strength to do it. Flying a
damaged B-17 is just not possible without the leg and upper body strength.

There was an episode of "Aviation Disasters" where a piston airliner had some
severe damage, I don't remember just what, just that the pilot had to
desperately muscle the controls for a couple hours.

This all changed, of course, with the advent of hydraulic boost. With fully
powered surfaces, the "feel forces" on the stick were faked by the "feel
computer". By the time I worked on the 757 flight controls, the "feel forces"
had been dialed back substantially to accommodate female pilots.

~~~
24gttghh
I would be careful to say _Women_ , as a group, cannot do something because of
their physiology. Sure, many women have a hard time flying older planes. I
would think many men would have had the same problem. If a woman really wanted
to, I should think she could work hard and overcome those difficulties.

~~~
newswriter99
>I would think many men would have had the same problem

But not on average. The average woman is physically weaker than the average
man. Which means, on average, women lack the body strength needed.

Why is HN getting infested with "muh feelings"? I don't know why people get so
offended by basic facts.

~~~
mcguire
" _Women don 't have the lower body strength to do it._"

" _The average woman is physically weaker than the average man._ "

Excellent motte and bailey
([https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Motte_and_bailey)).

~~~
manfredo
I don't see how this is a Motte and Bailey. The first quote is just a more
specific statement than the latter. They both say the same thing: that the
average woman's physical capacity is not as much as the average man.

~~~
mcguire
The original statement was, "[All] Women don't have the lower body strength to
[fly any WWII-era military airplane]." This is a very strong statement,
clearly too strong to be supported. (I mean, the article. And all the aircraft
delivered from factories by female pilots. And those Soviet combat pilots.
(But everyone knows Soviet women were big and beefy, right? Right?))

The second statement, on the other hand, "But not on average. The average
woman is physically weaker than the average man. Which means, on average,
women lack the body strength needed," is much easier to support (in fact, I'll
accept it as true). It also _looks_ like it offers support for the original
position.

Unfortunately, it doesn't. It serves only to divert the argument from an
unsupportable position to a supportable one. That is why it is a logical
fallacy.

~~~
manfredo
> "[All] Women don't have the lower body strength to [fly any WWII-era
> military airplane]."

No. You're significantly altering the statement with the words you're
injecting. Consider this:

"Dogs have four legs."

Would you correct people and point out that there are amputee dogs with fewer
than for legs? Most wouldn't, because referring to a group without a qualifier
is understood to refer to the majority or state that something is the norm,
not that it applies to literally every single item in that group.

~~~
mcguire
So you are arguing that the original statement should be interpreted as
something like, "[Normal] women don't have the lower body strength to [fly
normal (?) WWII-era military aircraft]?" That doesn't seem to be a wildly
meaningful statement without an addition, "[but normal men do]."

Unfortunately, that latter addition doesn't work; according to [1] (an
interesting document), 60% of RAF crews were rejected on medical grounds.

So we are seemingly left with, "[Normal] women don't have the lower body
strength to [fly normal (?) WWII-era military aircraft], [but superior men
do]," which once again is approaching the "so what?" stage.

~~~
manfredo
Again you're finding objections not in the words that were actually written,
only in the in the ones you have injected. Here's the full paragraph in the
original comment:

>For example, a B-17 could fly with only one outboard engine running. But the
pilot could barely hold the rudder in position to do it, and would trade off
with the copilot. Women don't have the lower body strength to do it. Flying a
damaged B-17 is just not possible without the leg and upper body strength.

It's clear that the commenters recognizes that flying the aircraft pushed male
pilots to the extremes of their physical ability, "...the pilot could _barely_
hold the rudder in position..." Furthermore this is in reference to combat
situations (a plane with 3 of 4 engines damaged). You're complaints about this
comment do far have been that it:

* Denied the existence of _any_ women that could perform these tasks. This wasn't claimed, see the "dogs have four legs" comparison.

* Claimed that women couldn't fly "normal" WWII aircraft. No, the commenter highlighted a combat scenario of flying a damaged plane that pushed pilots to their physical limit.

* That the average man could be a pilot. I don't see where this is claimed in the original comment. It actually states the opposite, that piloting in combat demanded peak physical performance.

Again, the Motte and Bailey only exists if you're injecting some other
message. The point is simply that piloting a WWII aircraft in combat was
physically extremely intense and demanded physical ability beyond typical
women (a point corroborated by your evidence that even most men were rejected
for their physical condition).

~~~
romwell
Right, because _subtlety_ and _implication_ aren't a part of communication,
especially in English, which is so _precise_ that sentences in it are
practically computer code.

~~~
manfredo
I wholeheartedly agree that implication is important. That's why the
interpretation of the original comment you have made in this reply chain is
ineffective. It fails to adhere to the commonly understood implication that
unspecified references to a group refers to the majority or the norm - not
every single member of that group.

"Dogs have four legs" != "Every single dog that exists has four legs"

~~~
romwell
Sure, sure. The following is just as true then:

>For example, a B-17 could fly with only one outboard engine running. But the
pilot could barely hold the rudder in position to do it, and would trade off
with the copilot. _Men don 't have the lower body strength to do it_. Flying a
damaged B-17 is just not possible without the leg and upper body strength.

Because, as you say, dogs =/= all dogs (and _men_ =/= _all men_ ).

~~~
manfredo
Sure. The statement that, "men don't have the lower body strength to do it" is
true. That has no impact on the veracity of the original claim that, "women
don't have the lower body strength to do it".

------
petermcneeley
Non-combat

~~~
okmokmz
What is the point of this comment? The title is completely accurate in stating
that she was a WW2 Spitfire pilot. There isn't any implication that she was a
combat pilot.

