Sheila Scott: the first British pilot to fly solo around the world

Worcestor-born Sheila Scott broke more than 100 flying records, and was the first British pilot to fly solo around the world. Stephen Roberts introduces us to this pioneering pilot

Sheila Scott OBE (1922-88)

When you think of pioneering female aviators you might conjure up Amy Johnson (1903-41), or maybe Amelia Earhart (1897-1939), but probably not Worcester’s own Sheila Scott (1922-88), the long-distance flying enthusiast and breaker of more than 100 flying records including becoming the first British pilot to fly solo around the world. Around 30 of her records still stand.

Born in the Loyal City at 12 Park Avenue, north of Pitchcroft, on April 27, 1922, the daughter of Harold Reginald Hopkins and Edyth Mary Kenward Hopkins, Sheila Christine Hopkins would go on, as Sheila Scott, to break those records for endurance and long-distance flying, including a 34,000 mile ‘world and a half’ flight in 1971, becoming in the process the first person to fly over the North Pole in a light aircraft. She was awarded the OBE in 1968.

The Alice Ottley School which was attended by Sheila Hopkins. Sarah Taylor/flickr.com/Creative Commons

Sheila’s childhood has been described as ‘turbulent’ and she fared poorly at the Alice Ottley School in Worcester, almost being turfed out on a few occasions. Named after the educational pioneer Alice Ottley (1840-1912), who was also the school’s first headmistress, the Alice Ottley operated under this name from 1883 until 2007 when it merged with the Worcester Royal Grammar School. I doubt that our Sheila was too fussed about any of this, focused most likely on just getting out of there. When WW2 broke out, though, Sheila began to show the kind of stuff she was really made of, joining the war effort as a nurse based in the naval hospital at Haslar (1944).

In 1943, to try and get herself noticed, Sheila had begun to tread the boards as an actress which is when she adopted the nom-de-plume ‘Sheila Scott’, an alias that she maintained for the rest of her life. She appeared in minor roles in all of TV, film and theatre, not altogether successfully, also working as a model. She married in 1945 to Rupert Leamon Bellamy, but Sheila Scott she has remained to posterity. The marriage was dissolved in 1950 and she remained single thereafter. It was in 1958, in her mid-30s, that Sheila learned to fly. After nine months of training, she flew solo at the aerodrome at Thruxton (Hants), her first aircraft a converted ex-RAF Tiger Moth, a ‘Thruxton Jackaroo’ G-APAM which she named ‘MYTH’ and flew from 1959 to 1964. She also became a demonstrator to help pay for her flying. It was in April 1966 that she purchased the plane that was to set so many records for her, the ‘Piper Comanche’ 260B G-ATOY ‘MYTH TOO’, which is on display at the National Museum of Flight in Scotland and has some of those 94 records inscribed on its side.

Thruxton aerodrome where Sheila Scott first flew solo. The airfield had been an operational fighter station during WW2. Richard Rogerson/Geograph/Creative Commons

Scott’s first solo round the world flight commenced from Heathrow on May 18, 1966. She flew 31,000 miles over 34 days, returning to the same airport on June 20, 1966. At the time it was the longest-distance solo flight and was only the third global flight completed by a woman. In 1967 alone she broke 23 world records and she’d repeat the circumnavigation feat in the same plane in 1969-70. It was no fault of hers that the plane was badly damaged by a subsequent owner (she’d sold it in 1971) so it does look rather the worse for wear in its Scottish home. It must have been a bit of a wrench parting with the plane that had looked after her so well but she continued flying, albeit using a borrowed plane, another Piper Comanche, 400 N8515P, continuing to set more records along the way. She achieved a certain amount of celebrity as she began to appear on TV game shows, including the US version of What’s My Line? in 1966 when panellists had to guess either what you did for a living or what you’d achieved that made you unique (a female pilot probably kept them guessing at the time).

Sheila Scott's Comanche in which she achieved so many of her world flying records. Alan Wilson/Wikimedia/Creative Commons

Sheila bought another plane in 1971, a Piper-Aztec 250 G-AYTO ‘Mythre’ which guided her to her third solo world flight in the same year. Sadly, this historic plane was destroyed in a flood at Piper’s factory in the States the following year; it seems Scott’s planes didn’t always have the best of fortunes. Scott’s flying seems to have gone off almost without a hitch though, her world records including: Flying between London and Cape Town (1967); flying the North Atlantic (1967) and South Atlantic (1969); flying Equator to Equator over the North Pole (1971), the first person to circumnavigate the Globe via the Poles. That year of 1971 was a heady one for Sheila as she also passed her driving test but at the fourth time of asking over a protracted period of a dozen years, proof if any were needed that she was more at home in the clouds than on carriageways.

Scott was a member of the delightfully-named ‘Whirly-Girls’, an association for women helicopter pilots formed in 1955. She also founded and became the inaugural governor of the British branch of the ‘Ninety-Nines’, an association for licensed women pilots created by that famed American flyer Amelia Earhart whom I mentioned in my intro. Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic (1932) but then disappeared over the Pacific in July 1937 when attempting to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. She was declared dead in January 1939, aged 41. The ‘Ninety-Nines’ name was Earhart’s suggestion, based on the number of its charter members apparently.

A Thruxton Jackaroo, an example of the first plane that Sheila Scott flew between 1959 and 1964. Steven Byles/Wikimedia/Creative Commons

Bearing in mind that the first accredited powered flight had only been achieved in December 1903 by the Wright brothers, it was still a risky business flying solo and setting records in Earhart’s time. Although Scott’s first solo world flight was over 60 years after man had first taken to the skies in a heavier-than-air aircraft you still had to have some gumption to do what she did. Her little planes were shorter in length than the average double-decker bus! (the plane Scott achieved her first two world flights in was a mere 25 feet long).

Scott was the recipient of several prestigious awards: In 1967 she was awarded the Harmon International Aviation Trophy for a new light plane speed and endurance record of in excess of 28,500 miles in 33 days; there were Brabazon awards in 1965, 1967 and 1968 (Lord Brabazon held the very first UK flying licence); the Royal Aero Club’s Britannia Trophy came her way in 1968 and its Gold Medal in 1971. Scott’s multiple achievements were recognised with the award of an OBE in 1968; not bad for a Worcester gal who’d not got on with school. Scott was also an authoress, penning: I Must Fly: Adventures of a Woman Pilot (1968); On Top of the World (1973), its US title Barefoot in the Sky (1974), which was her autobiography.

Sadly, Scott’s twilight was spent in relative poverty, her life a constant struggle to keep the wolf from the door. She ended her days a rather sad and forlorn figure in a bedsit in Pimlico after her fame had proved transitory. How tragic it is that such things can happen. She was diagnosed with cancer and died at the Royal Marsden on October 20, 1988, aged 66.

Worcester City University has one of its teaching buildings named after Sheila Scott, a fine tribute to one of the city’s most famous daughters. To have broken all those records required qualities that elude most of us: Courage, concentration over long periods, stamina and skill; fortitude. She had to cope for lengthy periods alone when the weather was appalling and sometimes equipment faulty. She deserved every bit of recognition she received, both during her lifetime and posthumously.

I’ll leave the last word to Sheila. She always played down the feelings of loneliness up there, listening to Beethoven and Rachmaninov and claiming to feel very much at one with her elemental surroundings: ‘Flying solo can be a spectacular experience – wondrous cloud formations, romantic sunsets, or cruel tendrils of black cloud, cold and eerie’. She claimed them all as a flyer’s familiar friends.