Amy Johnson

Amy Johnson CBE
Amy Johnson c. 1930
Born	(1903-07-01)1 July 1903 Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England
Disappeared	5 January 1941(1941-01-05) (aged 37) Thames Estuary, near Herne Bay, Kent, England
Status	Believed to have died in an aviation accident
Education	Boulevard Municipal Secondary School
Alma mater	University of Sheffield
Occupations	Aviator engineer
Spouse	Jim Mollison ​ ​ (m. 1932; div. 1938)​
Awards	Segrave Trophy (1932)

Amy Johnson CBE (born 1 July 1903 – disappeared 5 January 1941) was a pioneering English pilot who was the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia.

Flying solo or with her husband, Jim Mollison, she set many long-distance records during the 1930s. In 1933, Katharine Hepburn's character in the film Christopher Strong was inspired by Johnson. She flew in the Second World War as a part of the Air Transport Auxiliary. Her aircraft crashed into the Thames Estuary: she died after bailing out. Because her body was never recovered, the precise cause of her death—drowning, hypothermia or being pulled into a warship's moving propellers, is unknown and has been a subject of discussion since the possibility of friendly fire was raised in 1999 (see below).