Lettice Curtis

Eleanor Lettice Curtis (1 February 1915 – 21 July 2014) was an English aviator, flight test engineer, air racing pilot, and sportswoman.

Origins Curtis was born on 1 February 1915 at Denbury in Devon, a daughter of Eleanor Francis (née Master) and Walter Septimus Curtis (born 1871) of Denbury House. Her father was lord of the manor of Denbury, a barrister of Lincoln's Inn and a grandson of Matthew Curtis (1807–1887) of Thornfield in the parish of Heaton Mersey, Lancashire, a leading manufacturer of cotton-spinning machinery in Britain and thrice Mayor of Manchester. She also played Lacrosse for the University.

She learned to fly in 1937 at the Yapton Flying Club, Ford, West Sussex, earning a B–class licence.

Air Transport Auxiliary In early July 1940 Curtis became one of the first women pilots to join the British Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), remaining with the ATA until 30 November 1945, when the organisation was closed down.

On 26 October 1942 she was introduced to US First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt as the first woman pilot to be trained on four-engined bombers, during Roosevelt's visit to the ATA at White Waltham Airfield in Maidenhead. By that point, Curtis had already flown 90 different types of aircraft. Her final ATA rank was as First Officer. She qualified to fly helicopters in October 1992 and continued to fly aircraft until voluntarily "grounding" herself in 1995.

With the nationalisation of the aircraft industry in the 1960s she left Fairey for the Ministry of Aviation, working for a number of years on the initial planning of the joint civil/RAF Air Traffic Control Centre at West Drayton. Later under the United Kingdom Civil Aviation Authority, she worked for the Flight Operations Directorate. Retiring from the CAA in 1976, she took a job with a firm supplying contractors to the Sperry Corporation at Bracknell.

Curtis died in Maidenhead, Berkshire on 21 July 2014 at the age of 99.