Amy Johnson CBE

Amy Johnson took four days, six hours and 54 minutes to get there, alone inside the cabin of her fabric-covered, single-engined plane called The Desert Cloud. She landed to a huge crowd at Cape Town’s Municipal Aerodrome on 18 November, to slash an incredible 10 hours and 28 minutes off the existing record; what’s more she swiped it from her own husband Jim Mollison. The 6300-mile journey apparently went fairly smoothly despite the reported fact she had only five hours’ sleep at various refuelling stops – the aircraft had a range of 2000 miles, thanks to additional fuel tanks – even though all contact with her was lost for 24 hours as she flew 1300 miles across the Sahara Desert through the night, with no landmarks to guide her…