Pauline Gower

Pauline Mary de Peauly Gower Fahie (22 July 1910 – 2 March 1947) was a British pilot and writer who established the women's branch of the Air Transport Auxiliary during the Second World War.

Early life and education

Pauline Mary de Peauly Gower was born on 22 July 1910 to Dorothy Susie Eleanor (née Wills) (1882-1936) and Sir Robert Gower, MP. She had an older sister, named Dorothy Vaughan after their mother and they grew up at Sandown Court in Tunbridge Wells.

Pauline Gower was educated at Beechwood Sacred Heart School, which was run by Mother Ashton-Case, a cousin of her mother. She was a strong student and excelled at music and sport. At seventeen she became seriously ill and had to have a mastoidectomy which affected her health, particularly her lungs, for the rest of her life. Leaving school at 18, Gower did a season as a debutant, avoided finishing school in Paris and decided she needed a profession in which to earn her living.

Gower met Dorothy Spicer at the London Aeroplane Club at Stag Lane Aerodrome and they became friends. In August 1931 they established a joy-riding and air taxi service in Kent. Gower was licensed to carry passengers for 'hire or reward', and held a 'B' Pilot's licence after completing the test requirements which included a solo night flight and one hundred hours plus of flying in the day. Spicer was qualified as a ground engineer and held an 'A' (private) pilot's licence. They hired a plane and later bought a Gypsy Moth for the business, but struggled to make a living so decided to join the Crimson Fleet air circus and later the British Hospitals' air pageant.

Piloting career In 1932, to support British Hospitals, they toured the country with an Air Circus, giving air pageants in 200 towns. They joined the Aeronautical Section of the Women's Engineering Society in 1932. Gower also wrote for Girl's Own Paper and Chatterbox and published a collection of poetry, Piffling Poems for Pilots, in 1934. As a writer she was acquainted with W. E. Johns whose character Worrals was based on herself as well as Amy Johnson. She chaired a meeting on "The History of British Airships", where Mr. M. Langley championed the airboat and Hon. A. F. de Moleyns the airship.

In 1936, Gower was the first woman to be awarded the Air Ministry's Second Class Navigator's Licence. Later that year, Gower and her colleague Dorothy Spicer ('daring aeronauts') presented a technical paper at the Women's Engineering Society Annual General Meeting on the treatment of metals for aircraft engineers.

In 1938, she was appointed a civil defence commissioner in London with the Civil Air Guard. That year her work on women in aviation—Women with Wings—was published.

Air Transport Auxiliary On the outbreak of the Second World War, Gower made use of her high-level connections to propose the establishment of a women's section in the new Air Transport Auxiliary —the ATA would be responsible for ferrying military aircraft from factory or repair facility to storage unit or operational unit—to the authorities. Based at Hatfield, Gower formed a ferry pool, initially made up of eight female pilots in December 1939. Joan Hughes, Margaret Cunnison, Mona Friedlander, Rosemary Rees, Marion Wilberforce, Margaret Fairweather, Gabrielle Patterson and Winifred Crossley Fair were known as the First Eight.

Gower was appointed as the head of the women's branch, and commenced the selection and testing of women pilots, the first eight being appointed by the ATA on 1 January 1940. Early members included ice-hockey international Mona Friedlander, Margaret Fairweather (Lord Runciman's daughter) and former ballet dancer Rona Rees. Later members included Amy Johnson, Lettice Curtis and former Olympic skier Lois Butler.

In 1941, Gower's portrait was created by Ethel Léontine Gabain as part of a series commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee, it is now held by the Imperial War Museum.

Gower received the MBE for her services in 1942

Gower received a Harmon Trophy award posthumously in 1950.

Recognition A bus company in Hatfield named its eight buses after the "first eight" of the Tiger Moth pilots in the ATA, including Gower.

Personal life Gower married Wing Commander William Cusack "Bill" Fahie (b. Dublin 1918 - d. South Africa 1972) in 1945. She died on 2 March 1947 at her home, 2 The Vale, Chelsea, after giving birth to twin sons, Paul and Michael, who survived. She was buried on 7 March 1947 at the Kent and Sussex Crematorium and Cemetery in Tunbridge Wells.