The Real Amy Johnson (C4)

After her first flying lesson, the instructor told Amy Johnson: "You'd better pack this game up, love, you'll never make a flyer as long as you live." That pilot must have kicked himself when the Hull-born Johnson became a record-breaking aviator.

The sub-title of this documentary, Jason, Jim And Me, suggested a mile high threesome. In fact, Jason was the name of the aircraft in which she flew solo to Australia and Jim was the name of the equally high-flying, record-breaking pilot she married.

The story of the girl born in Hull in 1903 is intriguing. She came from a well-to-do family, the eldest of four daughters, and was always something of a rebel. Schoolfriend Nora Wilson Cook told how young Amy didn't conform, and wanted to get away from home as soon as she could.

Her choice of men was unfortunate. A handsome Swiss named Hans turned out not to be the prince of her dreams, but already married. The man she married, Jim Mollison, was a daring and dashing Scottish pilot in public and an adulterer in private. After finding him in bed with another woman, he admitted that he'd started playing around within a month of their marriage.

None of this could diminish her considerable achievements. Other aviatrix of the period told how flying was considered a rich man's game, with the accent on man. Prejudice prevented Johnson becoming a pilot, so she set out to prove herself by breaking the record for a solo flight to Australia.

She was certainly courageous, embarking on the 10,000-mile journey in a second-hand plane made almost entirely of wood and fabric, navigating with a map liable to blow out of the open cockpit if not gripped tightly, and a Thermos flask and boiled sweets for supplies.

She failed to break the record but became a celebrity. Even hitting a fence and tipping over the plane on landing didn't deter the enthusiasm of the crowds.

The flyer who'd been waved off from Croydon Aerodrome by a handful of people was welcomed back three months later by a million-strong crowd. Fame couldn't bring her what she really wanted - a proper flying job. Instead, she travelled, lectured and made public appearances.

Within a few years, she and Mollison needed to take desperate measures to keep in the limelight. A husband-and-wife non-stop flight to New York was the answer. A miscalculation resulted in their plane crashing 50 miles short of the destination.

The Second World War finally provided Johnson with what she wanted. She became a pilot in the Air Transport Auxilliary, writing to her father: "At last, a proper flying job".

Her aircraft went missing in January, 1941, and the programme claimed to know the truth about what happened to her after 50 years. The "evidence suggests" that she took off from Blackpool in bad weather on her way to Oxford, flew above the cloud and was shot down after straying into a no-fly zone. She was brought down by something we heard a lot about in the Iraq War - friendly fire.

Published: 06/06/2003