Air Commodore Dame Felicity Peake DBE (May 1, 1913, Cheadle Hulme, Stockport – November 2, 2002) was the founding director of the Women's Royal Air Force.
She only started flying when her first husband took up the hobby in 1935, but fourteen years later would become the first director of the Women's Royal Air Force (WRAF). On 30 August 1940, aged 26 and serving at Biggin Hill as a section officer in charge of some 250 women, she survived an attac...
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Air Commodore Dame Felicity Peake DBE (May 1, 1913, Cheadle Hulme, Stockport – November 2, 2002) was the founding director of the Women's Royal Air Force.
She only started flying when her first husband took up the hobby in 1935, but fourteen years later would become the first director of the Women's Royal Air Force (WRAF). On 30 August 1940, aged 26 and serving at Biggin Hill as a section officer in charge of some 250 women, she survived an attack by German bombers. Nine (9) Ju 88s swung north to take "The Bump" (as RAF pilots termed Biggin Hill) in a surprise attack. WAAF quarters were among the buildings hit, and an air raid shelter crammed with airmen was reduced to rubble. In all, 39 died. In 1946 she became director of the WAAF. She assumed her most senior position in 1949, when the decision was taken to establish a permanent role for women in the RAF.
Felicity Hyde Watts spent much of her youth at Haslington Hall, an Elizabethan house near Crewe, bought by her father after the...
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