Naomi Heron-Maxwell

Helen Naomi Heron-Maxwell (25 June 1913 – 1983) was a British parachutist and glider pilot in the 1930s. She was the first female glider pilot in the United Kingdom to achieve the Silver-C badge. She promoted gliding and helped establish gliding clubs. She was a ferry pilot for the Air Transport Auxiliary in the Second World War.

Early life

Helen Naomi Heron-Maxwell, known as Naomi, was born on 25 June 1913 in Folkestone. She was the daughter of a baronet, Sir Ivor Heron-Maxwell, eighth Baronet, and Lady Heron-Maxwell. She was the second child and second daughter of four children; her younger brother Patrick was the ninth baronet. Her father died in 1928 when Naomi was a teenager. "Sir Alan had heard her on the radio and saw mileage in having a woman parachutist to pull in the crowds. Naomi was equally aware of her marketing potential". The press called Heron-Maxwell "the only professional lady parachutist", "Britain's only lady parachutist", "the girl with the steadiest nerve in Britain". She lent her name to advertisements for Ovaltine.

Heron-Maxwell made around a hundred parachute jumps. Following this, Heron-Maxwell also had a near-accident following a change of equipment; she had previously used the Russell "Lobe" parachute. She was the first British woman to achieve the Silver-C badge.

Heron-Maxwell translated Wolf Hirth's Die Hohe Schule des Segelfluges from German as The Art of Soaring Flight, published in 1939.

In the United Kingdom, she worked as a gliding instructor at clubs including Cambridge University Gliding Club and Yorkshire Gliding Club. She helped to establish Oxford University Gliding Club and gave lectures to promote the foundation of other clubs, such as Bristol Gliding Club. In a lecture at Hull Literary and Philosophical Society, "With slides, diagrams and film, as well as commentary, lucid and unemotional, she indicated that gliding was a science, based on cool calculation, though always strangely fascinating and, in the ultimate, uncanny". Heron-Maxwell wrote articles about gliding and gave radio talks. She wrote that "as [gliding] is one of the few sports where, once the preliminary training is over, men and women compete on an equal basis, neither having an advantage over the other, more and more women are being attracted to it".

Air Transport Auxiliary

Heron-Maxwell was a ferry pilot in the Air Transport Auxiliary during the Second World War, between 1942 and 1945.

Personal life

Heron-Maxwell married Francis Cecil Howard Allen in 1938, but he died the following year. She moved to California, married Howard D Thomas in 1957 and had a child in 1958. She died in 1983.