92-Year-Old Female Pilot Returns to the Skies

After 70 years, a former Spitfire pilot in the Royal Air Force returned to air.

Joy Lofthouse, an air transport auxiliary vet, was a Spitfire pilot during World War II for the Royal Air Force.

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Now, at 92-years-old, she got ready to return to the skies 70 years later for the anniversary of VE Day which marked Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Allied Forces of World War II. BBC Radio 5 Live was there for the experience.

She said, “I am sort of excited but aware of my age. Hopefully things go okay. I am not as comfortable as I did when I used to fly them alone when I was young.”

She even got to take over the controls and fly the plane.

While in the air she said, “I am so lucky to have been given the chance to fly it again. It is hard to describe the feeling. It almost makes me feel young again.”

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But things have changed since the last time she flew the Spitfire.

When she landed, she told BBC, “I couldn’t talk as much I had hoped; of course someone was talking all the time. That was something I was not used to. We had no radio, once you took off you had complete silence and that was a big difference today.”

Even though it was 70 years since she last few a Spitfire, for Lofthouse, it was a still a joy to behold.

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