Amy Johnson, from East Yorkshire originally was a feminist icon of her time. Yet she disappeared in the early years of the Second World War.
Rumours have circulated that Britain's most famous female pilot ran out of fuel, was blighted by bad weather, or struck by barrage balloons as she flew a wartime aircraft to RAF Kidlington above the Thames Estuary on January 5, 1941. She baled out, and her body was never found.
An alternative explanation has been offered for the loss of the pioneer and wartime heroine after an old soldier claimed he shot down her aircraft because she failed correctly to signal she was flying a British plane.
Tom Mitchell, in peacetime a retired gardener but aged 25 at the time of the incident, said he was one of four soldiers stationed at Iwade, on the Thames Estuary, who were ordered to fire when an unidentified plane flew towards the English Channel.
It was only when he read of her death the next day, that he realised his guilt. "We felt absolutely terrible," the father of two, from Crowborough, East Sussex, said yesterday. "We all thought it was an enemy plane until we saw the newspapers the next day and realised it was Amy Johnson.
"Of course, we were upset, but it was wartime, we were doing our jobs and we got on with it. But it's not something I've wanted to talk about."
Mr Mitchell, a former gunner who served with the 58th Heavy Ack Ack Kent Regiment, said that when Johnson's plane was sighted, communication was made over the radio and a request given that she cite the colour of the day - a signal to identify planes known by all British forces. Tragically, the 37-year-old pilot gave the wrong colour - and repeated her mistake when the same officer asked a second time.
"The reason Amy was shot down was because she gave the wrong colour of the day over the radio. She got it wrong twice, and that's why we were ordered to shoot," said Mr Mitchell.
"Sixteen rounds of shells were fired into the sky and the plane dived into the Thames Estuary - but on the ground, we couldn't see that at the time."
Mr Mitchell added: "The next day, when we read about it in the papers, the officers told us to keep quiet and never tell anyone what happened."
He kept his secret for more than 50 years, labouring under the misapprehension that the Official Secrets Act meant he could not divulge it during this period.
When his sister Rosemary died last year, he re-read letters he had written to her at the time in which he detailed the story, and became convinced he could not die without offering his version for historical reasons. "All the events of that night came back to me and a friend at my social club said I ought to tell people."
He then spoke to his local newspaper.
Claims that Johnson was shot down, and did not run out of fuel, as the official line has always stipulated, have already been put forward by David Luff, an aviation historian who believed she was fired at by a naval convoy and the tragedy hushed up by a government anxious to avoid damaging morale.
There are some inconsistencies in the claim by Gunner Mitchell. Amy Johnson was on a delivery flight in an Airspeed Oxford and may not have had a radio on which to recieve and return the information for safe passage in home airspace. The weather conditions were reported to consist of heavy cloud and so observation of the plane , targeting with anti-aircraft fire and confirming damage will have been difficult. The actual crash site was some 18 miles from the anti-aircraft position introducing some doubts as to whether the plane was that piloted by Amy Johnson. Her baling out was reputed to be at 3.30pm but records much later released into the public domain placed the challenge and offensive action much later in the afternoon.
According to the version of events by the Air Transport Auxiliary, which employed her as a professional pilot from 1939, Johnson ran out of fuel after overshooting her destination by 100 miles. But this explanation - which would see her dramatically misjudging the distance from Blackpool to Oxford - seems implausible, given that she had successfully flown to Australia in 1930, to Japan in 1931, and to Cape Town in 1932.
But the Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon, north London, last night stood by the explanation that Johnson became lost above clouds, ran out of fuel, and, seeing barrage balloons, bailed out, believing she was over land.
The museum's archivist, Peter Elliott, said: "Unfortunately, the barrage balloons were being flown by a convoy in the Thames. A parachutist was seen in the clouds and landed down in the water followed by a second object now thought to have been her pigskin overnight case. An attempt to rescue her by surface vessels in the vicinity was unsuccessful and if still alive after a few minutes in the cold wintry water she may even have been fatally injured by the propellor of one of the search ships.
"There is no way of knowing if Mr Mitchell's account is true because it might have been so secret, it wasn't recorded by the battery, but I would be very sceptical."
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: "We have no way of confirming this story at present."
(acknowledged source document. Sarah Hall, The Guardian 6.2.99)
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