The Spitfire Girls Read online

  ALSO BY SORAYA M. LANE

  Wives of War

  Hearts of Resistance

  Voyage of the Heart

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2019 by Soraya M. Lane

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Lake Union Publishing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Lake Union Publishing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781503905030

  ISBN-10: 1503905039

  Cover design by Emma Rogers

  Cover photography by Richard Jenkins Photography

  For Maureen, the best mother & grandmother in the world. Thank you for everything.

  CONTENTS

  START READING

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  EPILOGUE

  We will not...

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  This is not a time for women to be patient. We are in a war and we need to fight it with all our ability and every weapon possible. Women pilots, in this particular case, are a weapon waiting to be used. Hence I am speaking up for the women fliers, because I am afraid we cannot afford to let the time slip by just now without using them.

  — Eleanor Roosevelt (1 September 1942)

  PROLOGUE

  TEXAS, 1940

  LIZZIE

  ‘Sweetheart, what are you doing in my office?’

  Lizzie looked up, pen poised above the words she’d so carefully written on the page. She smiled at her father as he collapsed into the armchair on the other side of the heavy oak desk. He always gave her the same look, as if they were co-conspirators in whatever she was working on, and today was no different.

  ‘I’m writing to Mrs. Roosevelt to explain how women could assist the military,’ she said, waiting for his eyebrows to shoot up in surprise, which they did almost immediately. ‘Would you like to hear it?’

  ‘You’re writing to the first lady?’ he asked, shaking his head, his eyes twinkling. Her father was always humouring her, always ready to listen to whatever hare-brained idea she might have. ‘Lizzie, we’re not even at war.’

  ‘Yet,’ she said. ‘We’re not at war yet, Daddy.’

  ‘Well then, read away.’

  Lizzie cleared her throat and sat back in her daddy’s chair, letter raised slightly in her hand. She glanced at the framed photo of him in his uniform before reciting the words, imagining herself doing the daring things he’d described to her ever since she was a little girl, the adventures in the air during wartime that he had so vividly recalled to her.

  ‘Dear Mrs Roosevelt,

  As an avid supporter of women’s rights, I write in the hope of your expert assistance. I have thought of many ways to start my letter, but in truth I’m a straight talker and I want to get directly to the point. Although our country presently isn’t at war, and I certainly hope it will remain that way, I want to be prepared to assist if required.

  Women can play a much bigger role in the event of war than nursing and supporting our men at home. As an experienced pilot myself, I believe women pilots could take over military flying jobs that don’t involve fighting, to allow male pilots to be released for combat service. Women pilots could successfully ferry planes for the military and conduct support missions, and I would be more than prepared to personally train these women.

  To succeed, we need your support, and I would love to meet with you to discuss how I could assist the military to establish a squadron of brave, capable American women pilots.’

  She cleared her throat and dropped the letter to the desk.

  ‘So what do you think?’ she asked, studying her father’s face. He was always telling her that she could achieve anything she set her mind to, but this time she didn’t want to be placated. This time she wanted his honest opinion. He was a veteran, one of their nation’s most celebrated pilots from the Great War, and she wanted to know what the pilot in front of her thought, not the daddy trying to say what his daughter wanted to hear.

  ‘Sweetheart, I honestly don’t know what to say.’

  She sighed and folded the crisp sheet of paper, placing it carefully in the envelope.

  ‘You think I’m crazy for believing this could happen?’ she asked. ‘Is that it?’

  He reached out and took her hand. ‘Lizzie, it’s not me you have to convince. I’ve seen you in the sky. I’ve been watching you and listening to you for years,’ he said. ‘But convincing men that you’re every bit as capable as them isn’t going to be so easy. You know that as well as I do.’

  She squeezed his hand in return before gently letting it go. ‘Mrs Roosevelt isn’t a man,’ she replied, knowing she sounded like a temperamental child. ‘And I bet there were plenty of people who doubted how talented you were until they saw you fly first hand.’

  ‘Getting what you want is never easy. Don’t go thinking that I dazzled everyone from day one, Liz. It took me months before I had the chance to prove myself, but I always knew that one day I’d have the opportunity to show everyone what I could do,’ he said. ‘And it might be the First Lady you’re writing to, but it’s men you’re asking her to convince on your behalf.’

  Lizzie knew that – of course she did. But if she could get just get one person on her side, if she could get one foot in the door, she knew she’d be able to convince others that she was capable. Patience had never been her virtue, and she doubted it ever would be. But determination? She had that in abundance. And she didn’t believe it had ever been as hard for a man to prove himself as it was for a woman to do the same.

  ‘I’m not you, Daddy,’ she said. ‘You had the opportunity to show them from the sky, but I might never get that chance unless I fight for it.’

  ‘One day, Lizzie, women will have all the respect in the world.’ He sat back, puffing on his pipe. The strong, familiar odour was pungent, but it was a smell Lizzie had grown up with and one that would forever be associated with her father. ‘For now, you need to bide your time, keep your flying hours up and wait for the opportunity to present itself. And you need to placate your mother before she starts on at me again. You won’t be going anywhere if you can’t get her on
side.’

  ‘Mama isn’t going to tell me whether or not I can fly if we enter the war. I’m a grown woman,’ she retorted, pressing the seal on the envelope. ‘She knows better than anyone that I can’t just sit here and do nothing.’

  ‘Keep writing those letters then. Keep fighting,’ her father replied. ‘And don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t fly a plane better than a man.’ He laughed and puffed again. ‘Your mother included.’

  Lizzie curled up on the chair and stared out the window, looking up at the bright blue sky as she smiled at her father’s words. She would keep writing, and as much as she loved her mother, this was one thing she was more than prepared to defy her on. If Mrs Roosevelt wouldn’t help her, then she would write to the president himself, and to the army, and then she’d write to Mrs Roosevelt all over again. She wasn’t going to stop until someone took her seriously and gave her the chance to prove herself from the cockpit.

  Her daddy was the finest and most decorated wartime pilot in Texas, and she’d show the world that she was every inch her father’s daughter.

  Hatfield (north of London), 1940

  May

  May Jones clenched her jaw tight, hand trembling with anger as she held the well-thumbed copy of Aeroplane. Once, she’d loved reading the aviation magazine, but she vowed then and there never to so much as touch another issue of it.

  She cleared her throat and glanced up at the seven other women watching her before starting to read out loud from the page in front of her. They’d been waiting at the factory for almost an hour, and she’d been wondering why the usually chatty group of girls had been so quiet. Now that she’d read what her second officers had been whispering about, she understood why no one had wanted to show her. She took a deep breath and shook her dark hair back, still unused to the short crop.

  ‘We quite agree that there are millions of women in the country who could do useful jobs in war. But the trouble is that so many of them insist on wanting to do jobs which they are quite incapable of doing.’

  May paused, anger pulsing at her neck and setting her skin on fire as she read the words.

  ‘The menace is the woman who thinks that she ought to be flying in a high-speed bomber when she really has not the intelligence to scrub the floor of a hospital properly, or who wants to nose around as an Air Raid Warden and yet can’t cook her husband’s dinner.’

  When she set the magazine down, silence fell, and May slowly considered every woman in the room with her. The concrete floor wasn’t helping the frigid conditions, and they all had their hands tucked into the armpits of their sheepskin jackets to stay warm, but she was burning with an anger so red hot she was no longer feeling the cold. They would never dare to say such things about men – but women? They treated them as second-class citizens no matter what they were doing, unless they were cooking dinner or holding some sort of cleaning apparatus, and she was sick and tired of it. They were all fighting for the same cause!

  ‘Ladies, this is the biggest load of nonsense I’ve ever read,’ she said, sighing and shutting her eyes for a beat as she tried to calm the fury pumping through her veins. ‘This editor, this’ – she took a deep breath – ‘this excuse of a man! To think he can write about us in this way is absolutely appalling. I don’t want to see anyone reading or talking about this ridiculous article ever again.’

  Betty, one of her most experienced fliers, started to clap, and one by one every other woman followed suit until all of them were clapping and grinning back at her, their cold hands clearly forgotten. May held her head high as a mechanic walked in, a puzzled expression on his face as he looked at them, no doubt wondering what in God’s name they were doing. She met his gaze and nodded, feeling sorry for the poor lad that he’d walked straight into a room full of furious women.

  ‘He’s right though. I can’t scrub floors to save myself!’ Betty called out.

  ‘Scrubbing floors,’ May scoffed, shaking her head as she scanned the page again. ‘I’m not sure what he thinks we were doing before this, but I can tell you that women with more than five hundred hours’ flying experience have better things to do than scrub bloody floors!’

  They were fully fledged members of the Air Transport Auxiliary, a civilian organisation established to ferry new, repaired and damaged military aircrafts for the Royal Air Force, not silly girls pretending to be pilots! And today, on their first official flight, they were going to prove how much they were needed in this war.

  Another of her girls, Penelope, cleared her throat, and May turned to her. She’d always been the quietest of the bunch, so it was good to see her joining in.

  ‘My mother wrote to me the other day and said she chased a neighbour away with her broom when he questioned her about my pay,’ Penelope said. ‘Apparently it’s a national disaster that glorified female show-offs are being paid six pounds a week. But she told him where to stick it and not to come back!’

  They all laughed, and as May watched them, the heat that had spiralled up her neck and burst into her cheeks turned to warmth. She hadn’t laughed in a long while, but it felt nice to be part of the camaraderie for once. It was lovely that Penelope’s mother had been so forthright in defending them, and she knew her own parents would do the same. They were proud of her and wouldn’t hear a bad word about their pilot daughter. Even if it had been months since she’d been home to see them. She pushed the guilt away.

  ‘Excuse me, but do you have a match you could spare?’ May asked, gesturing to the handsome mechanic in overalls, who was still hovering near the door.

  He walked over, dark eyes searching out hers, his broad, straight shoulders and easy stance telling her that he wasn’t in the least intimidated by what he’d heard. She watched as he reached into his pocket, and when he politely extended the matches and some cigarettes, she thanked him and took only one match, swiftly lighting it and placing it to the open page of the magazine.

  ‘You can’t light a fire in here!’ he blurted, flapping his hands at the paper she still held as a low flame licked across it. ‘What the heck do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘I don’t want any of you reading this kind of rubbish again,’ May insisted loudly, ignoring the poor mechanic. She dropped the paper to the concrete floor and he stomped on it to put the fire out. ‘We have every right to be flying, and one day our fellow countrymen will look back proudly on what we did for the war effort.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’ cried Betty, stamping her feet.

  ‘We are doing our duty and enabling men to go to the front and fight, and I will not hear a bad word said about any of you brave ladies. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Perfectly clear, ma’am!’ Sarah called back, saluting and giving her a big grin.

  May received murmurs of ‘Yes’ and nods from the seven women gathered, and in that moment, as she saw how proudly they wore their flying suits while they waited to be assigned their planes, she could hardly believe what they were about to do. Their flying outfits might not be fashionable like their smart dark-blue uniforms, with their gold threaded wings and ATA insignia on their jackets, but they were practical, and they’d been made just for them. And she’d never been so proud to wear anything in all her life. To hell with their superiors, who’d thought they could wear skirts in the air in almost polar conditions – a pilot was a pilot, and they all needed the same protective clothing in the sky. She wasn’t going to stand for men making decisions about her women, not if they were going to be taking to the sky to help defend their beautiful country.

  They were the First Eight, and they were about to show the rest of England exactly what they were made of.

  ‘It’s time for wheels up, ladies,’ she said, signalling for the women to follow her and shrugging at the mechanic’s still-furious expression. ‘Any questions?’

  She received none, and she hadn’t really expected any. She’d hand-picked the women herself, and with impeccable logbooks and thousands of hours of flight experience between them, their ability to do th
eir job wasn’t something she worried about. The weather conditions? Yes. She was constantly concerned about the cloud cover that England was so well known for. The chance of being fired upon when they had no bombs or guns to defend themselves with? Absolutely. And the fact they were flying without radios and instruments? Every second of every day. But not once had she doubted their ability to fly whatever plane they were asked to transport; and the slow, sturdy Tiger Moths weren’t difficult by any means. It wasn’t glamorous work, and no one else wanted to fly the sluggish aircraft in the middle of winter, but she was going to prove that her little squadron could fly every darn plane the military had. If they had to prove themselves in Tiger Moths first, then so be it.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she asked the mechanic, turning her attention back to him.

  ‘Benjamin,’ he replied. ‘I’m actually your flight mechanic, ma’am.’

  She froze. ‘You’re my mechanic?’

  ‘That’s me,’ he said, his dark gaze never straying from hers. She couldn’t decide if she liked how forthright he was or whether it irked her. ‘I’ve completed a thorough visual check of your engine; it’s been uncovered and completely examined for leaks. She’s warmed up and ready to fly.’

  May hesitated before speaking again, wishing they’d got off on a better footing if they were going to be working closely together. ‘Thank you, Benjamin. And if you’re assigned to me, we should be a team – there’s no reason for formalities. May will do just fine,’ she said briskly. ‘I hope you’ll forgive me for my little stunt before.’

  Benjamin raised a brow, still looking unimpressed. ‘We’ll see.’

  She watched him go before turning back to her squadron. They all walked outside, with May in the lead, and she cast her glance skyward. The cloud had mainly cleared, which meant conditions weren’t likely to get any better, so it was time for take-off. The planes sat in the gloomy morning like shining steeds lined up on the runway. They were a mixture of new and repaired, and May and her squadron needed to fly them to Scotland immediately, then bring back wounded, less able versions to be worked on at the factory. That was the flight she worried about most, because even the best pilot in the world was only as good as the engine and wings keeping him or her in the sky, and limping back in a damaged plane was never ideal. There would be no assigned flight mechanic at the other end to make sure they all made it home safely, that was for sure.