This week in 1945, a fascinating fact for anyone who didn’t have to live it firsthand: a wartime airplane mechanic accidentally ended up airborne on the tail of a plane.
She was Margaret Horton, Leading Aircraftwoman at a Royal Air Force base in North Lincolnshire, England.
She was a mechanic there with the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.
And, at the time of this very strange work day, she was helping with what was known as a Rough Weather Procedure.
The Air Force didn’t want planes to tip or sway ahead of a takeoff, so they would have humans climb aboard to serve as ballast as the planes taxied.
Horton was on the tail of a Spitfire; typically she and the pilot would exchange some kind of signal so she could hop off the plane just before it started taking off.
But, for whatever reason, that never happened: the pilot started the regular takeoff procedure instead of the one for rough weather.
Before Horton could get his attention, she and the plane were in the air.
At this point she figured she was a goner; she was barely holding onto the tail as it was, so she could only think of what a shame it was that she didn’t get to say goodbye to her mother.
She waited for the inevitable to come, but it didn’t: for one thing, she happened to be in a position where parts of the aircraft were physically in the way of her slipping off.
She never even lost her beret while she was in the air.
And while she didn’t know it at the time, the pilot had radioed back to base to say he was going to land because there was something wrong with the tail controls.
The ground staff had realized, to their horror, that the something wrong was “Margaret Horton is on the tail.”
But they didn’t want to freak the pilot out, so they just said okay, we’ll see you back on the ground, and the plane made what Horton called a perfect gentle landing.
She had somehow hung onto the tail of a plane in flight and lived to tell the tale.
Horton later wrote that British pilots had a saying about their planes during the war: “A Spitfire will never let you down.”
She was living proof of that.
Today is National Umbrella Day.
Portland, Maine is home to the Umbrella Cover Museum.
Founder Nancy 3. Hoffman had kept the covers for all the umbrellas she’d ever owned and decided, I guess I have the start of a museum collection here.
As one does.
Riding a Spitfire: the story of Margaret Horton (Royal Air Forces Association)
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Photo by Dave_S. via Flickr/Creative Commons