1960-04-16 — Page 13

W

WOMEN of the AIR

PART FOUR

THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY; APRIL 16, 1960.

#EVEN TODAY THREE OF HER RECORDS STILL STAND

Jean Batten sold

her piano to learn to fly

FITH the insistence of a pneumatic drill the sound of the piano tramped through the house. Over and over again thin fingers hammered out scales, harshly and faultlessly. The notes crashed and collided and drove the tranquillity out of the warm New Zealand afternoon. But Mr Batten the dentist smiled blissfully. He had put his foot down. He had won

victory.

a:༢,

I was HR and his daughter The x1 marnlaga young Jenni. dark-hatred, imp-laved, woman, just 5ri, sin. tall, arrived and tiny, hut been told fully at the reception desk of ferm and fatly that she was not going of aircraft makers and explained to ly.

her lying hours had renched double Bgures and could the please have some financial support in order to have a go at breaking Amy Johnson's record # from England to Australia. The missionaire didn't even bother to laugh.

She was going to be a enneeri pianist, just as she had always be before wablet in Bert Winkler had broken the from England to flying record Australia the year before.

There was only one Spall cloud Mr Batten's horizon, South wife was going England. Heaven knows that would he expensive enough. Now his daughter wanted to jura bench.

Atars he had smartly re- Jeeted the iden.

But when she smiled at him with black devil in her eyes and asked wheer else could one learn music except in London he was undone.

They travelled to England. As London soon as they reached Jean was on the telephone. But not to the Royal College of Music. She was speaking to the

London Acra Club.

Won over

By this time mother had been won over to her daughter's side. She was not so much an ally as an accomplice and together they shared a single room in North London hard by the Stag Lane airfield.

All the Ume the letters went home 1 father. They tol story of hours of plane practice. Technically they were true but a word about they didn't say hours in the air with a Gipsy Muth.

Pawned

From other to office she went. She was sometimas given a cup of tea but never

word of hope.

And she learned about pawns brokers. First she pledged all those stender scraps of jewellery that a 19-year-old daughter of a New Zealand dentist would possess. Finally she parted with her overcust. Life was grey,

1: was then that she met a who was going to young man

make all the difference. He was Victor Duree, a member of the fying club and he actually own- ed a Tiger Moth of his own.

He and Jean did a deal of flying together and at week- ends she would go and stay at parents' home. She went Fils often enough for the sake of * square meal but always to foster a plan burning hape fully in her mind persuade Victor Doree to lend herbs aircraft. It was hard work but at last she won.

to

Д

spent so much Eme sponsoring air records.

He would have her brought back to England.....and he would also like to meet her.

They met.

He told her she could Go shopping for another aircraft.

by ROBERT GLENTON

smoothly as it had

sea Jean Batten stared into the droned as huzy distance,

ever done. Was it a grey clond bank she The rest of the light was n saw, or was it land on the magnificent success, Seventeen horizon? Her heart rose and days later she landed at Croydon tell with the swing of the plane, to be carried on two policemen's It was Zond. Clearer every shoulders from her nireralt, moment. At Darwin the dust through A crowd which WHA bowl of an airfield was garish swollen by the visitors for the with the colour of a huge mob, Jubilee of King George V.

How they cheered! Even har- der than they had greeted Amy

Five months later Jean Batten became the fifth owner Johnson.

of 2 four-year-old alpsy She had made the Right in Moth Again the set off for

14 days 22 hours. 30 minutes Australia. Again she crashed

педт Nome. It happened more than four days faster during the algit. When day- thon Amy Johnson, tight came she found she was 26 yards from the Tiber,

It took a week to get her air- plane bark to England. But then, after two more days, on May 8, 1934, Jean Ballen was off again.

This time

there really was a fuss. By this time she was known as "Try Again Jean"...."Third Time Lucky" and although she had not yet established record of any description, she had become one of the best- known women in aviation.

Jean herself said very little. But secretly she nursed a little dream that it would be nice to beat Amy Johnson.

The 80 miles an hour, £275 Moth took off, the spectators cheered and went home.

'Nonsense'

Was

robbed.

Jean Batten She was mobbed all the way across. Australia. It was a trium- phant lime.

There was one jarring note .....a broken romance.

Now she held two records. Apart from beating Amy John- EDD's time to Australia, she

the

became the first woman to fly both ways. A year later in a Percival Gull she flew Atlantic from England to the Argentine and picked up two more records,

She arrived back by ship with 11 shopping bags and ap oilt carboard box alled with jewels and £300 In notes which the romantic Latins had given her.

Jenn Batien was where she The New Zealand newspapers

wanted to be a world fler. Next, she made the first direct discovered that before she left

flight from England to New England she had become secretly

Zealand. London stock- engaged to

lot of anger Edward Fraser Walter. After her Rome crash about her flying the 1,524 miles she had used the wings from hts of the Tasman Sea alone. A spanking aircraft for her record fight.

broker.

Mr

£

But in London the day after the happy news was published Mrs Batten announced that the soon afterwards Jean sent him engagement was nonsense. And

Over the Channel Jean Batten the money in return for the help was shivering with cold. But he had given, and broke off 131⁄2 hours from Lympne she the engagement. was in Rome.

She said she had chosen By- ing instead of marringe.

There was a fuse and publi- city for a time but Bird

It down—until Jean Balien's cathe into the CWB again. She was going to By brok from Australia to Lon-

Aliens, Nicosia. Damascus, Basra. Karachi, Rangoon, Singa- pore. Kipang....

The aircraft was hers for the time being and an mil emmpany

Now Australle was only just

500 miles away.

Eight offered to help with the fuel bil.

over On April 19. 1933, Jean hours of loneliness over the Ballen, 23 years old, tucked a Timer Sea and strong head- Inde woolly black eat museot wind. An error in navigation Eventually Mrs Batten had to her pocket, wrapped a New would certainly be fatal. to return and, promising to Zealand Jag round her neek as keep the secret, she left her scarf, and took off from daughter behind. Almost Lymane. Ilardly anyone bother- Immediately after dat Jeaned to see her off. sold her piano to pay for more flyloz icons. There could

She got lost

be no iurning back. At first al went well. She was Musle had gone for good and ahead of previous record-times. in its place Jean Batten got She became news, Prople began her "A" licenor.

Now she decided was the ume to break the news to father.

That alght she wrote to him. I was a long, long wait before his answer rame.

He wasn't proud that his daughter had her wings. He was extremely angry. He stopped her £2-a-werk allowance and told her 1 cone straight home.

to gather at her staging points.

Then 20 miles from Karachi she got lost, and force-landed in a held.

She was unhurt but humilinted and the aircraft was a hope less wroek.

Hour after hour she flew. She made her midday meat of coffee and an orange last AS long as she could just to break the monotony of the lonely view of sea and sky and the black shadow of the alrcraft ailding over the water.

her

Seven hours went by and with

calloused hand she had pumped the last of the petrol into the main tale.

those

eritical moments when Austraila should have been in sight. Stunned by days of engine drone and eyes

came

tiaine

On April 12, 1935, she took of trom Darwin. This time she was crossing the Timor Sea when she was fit and fresh.

More records

The engine beat out a happy rhythm. Then 200 miles

from land, it faltered, picked up, and stopped again.

Down, out of the sun, through the cloud came the little plane. Down towards the glassy pea.... and the sharks.

Jean Batten grabbed the little axe she carried in her cockpit. Sne had a wild idea of cutting away one wing, and using it as a raft.

Then She was thousands of miles from home. with not even enough money to pay her fare. Then came a message from Lord Wakefield, the man who aching with the glitter from the again. I cleared its throat and

There was

#

Before the take off, above the noise of the engine, she beckoned a reporter over and wrote in his sea no one must fly out to look notebook: "It I go down In the for me....I have no wish to im- peril the lives of others."

That didn't stop the Mayor of Auckland, who greeted her, from "You deserve saying:

a good spanking."

Back across the Timor Sca she hated she flew once more from Australin to England.

It was 1937, and Jean Ballen was 23.

She had made six record Alghie. Three of them stand today, And just да suddenly as she came on the sceno so che faded,

She never altempted another record. Instead, she flew round Europe lecturing for the British Council.

women

Like many another spinster daughter she spent her time caring for her mother. She took her to live in and Jomaica.

Spain, Majorca,

Of all these famous fliera of her age. Jean Batten is one of the very few still alive.

Attractive, 40, she lives in an isolated home, in the sun, with only a bank

a forwarding

---(London Express Service).

Then the engine coughed address.

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