Mary Ellis blazed a trail for female aviators, as one of the first women to fly Spitfires, heavy bombers and jet aircraft. She was a member of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), which employed civilians to deliver planes from factories to airfields during the Second World War.... At one RAF base, the ground crew refused to believe she was the pilot of the Wellington bomber she had just landed. "They actually went inside the aeroplane and searched it," she recalled. "Everybody was flabbergasted that a little girl like me could fly these big aeroplanes all by oneself."... Mary Ellis died...