Margot Duhalde lies awake scared when she remembers what she was doing more than 70 years ago: Flying fighter planes over England without radar in World War II — and sometimes crashing.
A country girl from southern Chile, of French Basque ancestry, she became her country’s first female pilot — and the only woman aviator to join the Free French Forces of General Charles de Gaulle’s government in exile.
Now 96 and living in a military retirement home in Santiago, it frightens her to recall the dangers she faced while playing her part in Europe’s fight against the Nazis.
Photo: AFP
However, as a young woman, she did not hesitate.
“Ever since I can remember, I wanted to fly,” she told reporters. “According to my mother, I started saying ‘plane’ before I could say ‘mummy.’”
Duhalde convinced her parents to let her leave her country home in Rio Bueno when she was 16 year old and go to Santiago to train as a pilot.
She lied about her age and enrolled in the Santiago flying school with the support of veteran French pilot Cesar Copetta.
In 1940, she answered the call of de Gaulle to join the French forces as a volunteer.
At the age of 20, she was recruited as a pilot by the Free France consulate in Santiago. She headed to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and from there by ship to brave the war in Europe.
Apart from the English weather, she faced the barriers of language and sexism at a time when women pilots were rare.
“The men always said that women were never going to be able to fly airplanes,” she said. “But they had to swallow their pride, because really we flew just as well as they did.”
In spite of it all, she ended up being incorporated into the British Royal Air Force (RAF) as it fended off the Nazi threat.
At first, Duhalde was made to look after the sick and aid the mechanics.
However, she was eventually recruited into the RAF Air Transport Auxiliary to help with the war effort.
Her mission: Flying Supermarine Spitfires and other aircraft from one British airfield to another to prevent them from being destroyed on the ground by the enemy.
“Our mission was to clear the factories as soon as possible, so the Germans wouldn’t bomb them,” she said. “So in one day, we could fly five separate flights.”
Flying without radar, she dodged the giant air balloons that were hoisted by the British to disrupt the courses of German bombers.
With no time for hours of flight practice, she and her fellow “ferry pilots” learned to fly the different types of aircraft with a bit of theoretical training and by reading the manuals.
“I believe we ran a risk every day, because we were flying planes that we were not familiar with,” she said.
France’s Armed Forces Historical Review notes that Duhalde “piloted more than 1,500 British or US aircraft of every type: fighters, bombers, transports and training aircraft.”
During her wartime service, she had about 10 plane accidents that nearly killed her.
“Nowadays it makes me afraid” to think of it, she said. “When I’m trying to sleep, I’ll think of one of the accidents I had and get scared.”
Duhalde was not the only woman pilot to fly during the war, but in her home country she is a legend.
Her exploits won her the French Legion d’Honneur and decorations in Britain and Chile.
On returning home, she became the first woman air traffic controller in Chile and worked as an airline pilot.
She last piloted a plane in 2007, at the age of 86.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia