Mona Friedlander

Mona Renee Vera Ernesta Forward ( Friedlander, 2 June 1914 – 24 December 1993) was a British pilot and one of the eight founding pilots who started the women's section of the Air Transport Auxiliary.

Early life Mona Renee Vera Ernesta Friedlander was born in Queensgate, London in June 1914. Her father was a rich banker and they lived in Park Lane. Age six her mother took her and her sister, who suffered from tuberculosis, to live in Paris. Friedlander went to school in Vienna, Switzerland and Germany, only returned to live in Britain age seventeen. She attended the LSE and took a secretarial course, which led to secretarial jobs. Age 21, she went to America as a secretary to a friend of her father. She qualified as a 2nd class navigator and in night flying. In the 1939 Register she was listed as a pilot living in 16 Deansgate, Manchester. Friedland took the Air Transport Auxiliary test at Filton, Bristol having been written to because she had over 200 flying hours. Alongside Winifred Crossley Fair, Margaret Cunnison, Hon. Margaret Fairweather, Joan Hughes, Gabrielle Patterson, Rosemary Rees and Marion Wilberforce, they were known as the First Eight, all appointed by Commandant Pauline Gower.

The role was so new that she had to design and then get a tailor to make her uniform. Hers was based on the male uniform but with fewer pockets and in a lighter shade of blue. Friedlander did a lot of night flying as she would fly back and forth along a defined route so that gun batteries could use her plane to practice identifying her range and direction using their listening equipment The work was cold and initially she was unable to find a wireless operator to fly with her. Eventually one man proved amenable to flying with a female pilot. After that she had other willing crewmen. Her logbook was checked and signed every month by Pauline Gower.

Personal life Mona Friedlander married Alan Forward in 1941 in Westminster.

Mona Forward died in Halstock, Dorset on Christmas Eve 1993 at the age of 79.

Legacy In 1985 the Imperial War Museum recorded her biography as an oral history. The fifteen surviving women members of the ATA (and 100 surviving male pilots) were given a special award in 2008 by the Prime Minister Gordon Brown.