The Pioneer Aviators

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is the 21rst century. The hardy souls that set out to establish personal conquest of the few remaining tracts of forbidding wilderness, be it on land, sea or air, go fully equipped with tried and tested paraphernalia designed specifically for the terrain they wish to traverse. They embark on their quest, secure in the knowledge that, should the improbable happen, their fellow-men will be on hand to assist them in their predicament with alacrity, aided as they will be by a staggering range of devices from artificial satellites to custom designed rescue machinery.

A century ago at the time of writing, when all the technology and knowledge that we take for granted now was either inchoate and unreliable or as yet unborn, it took a genuinely intrepid spirit to venture into the uncharted territories that revelled in their hitherto unassailable grandeur. The most representative of this type of terrain was the sky. For precisely this reason, it held an unswerving fascination for the most adventuresome of mankind then extant and they responded magnificently to the call. Criss-crossing the sometimes blue, sometimes grey but always dangerous vault in rickety contraptions that were the forerunners of today's luxurious aircraft, with no hope of rescue should the untoward happen, they blazed a glorious trail through it that has benefited the whole of mankind. They were the pioneer aviators.

The female of the species, battling more against the social mores extant in those relatively unenlightened days than the forces of nature, accomplished as much as the male. One of the illustrious amongst them came from New Zealand. She was Jean Gardner Batten, who the Maori, mighty warriors and proven explorers themselves, dubbed with awe and admiration, "Hine-O-Te-Rangi", the Daughter of the Skies.

A Star Is Born

On July 25, 1909, a big, bluff, moustachioed Frenchman took off in his Model X monoplane from Les Barraques, France and flew it through inclement weather and 22 miles of English Channel to Dover, England in 40 minutes to become the first man to vanquish the aforementioned famous body of water by air. The story and Bleriot's photograph crossed the Indian Ocean to reach the town of Rotorua, New Zealand, where they were cut out of the newspaper and pinned above the cot of a little girl born on the 15th of September in the same year, by her mother. This would be Jean's first exposure to the world of the wide blue yonder.

The daughter of a dentist by name Frederick Harold Batten and his wife, Ellen "Nellie" Blackmore, she was originally christened Jane after her grandmother. But the name managed to evolve into Jean soon.

Early Life in Rotorua

She was the fourth child in the family and had three elder brothers, one of whom had died in his infancy. In obvious absolute antithesis to her spirit, she was a tiny and frail infant who was fussed over by all in her family. But she became especially close to her mother, who was a fascinating woman in her own right. Of the first nation in the world to implement women's suffrage, she was a high-spirited lady that broke new ground in the advocating women's rights, equality and independence. She scintillates as the main inculcator of values that invigorated and stood by Jean through the inevitable adversity that she went through in pursuit of her dreams.

Early Life in Auckland

In 1913, when Jean was four, the family moved to Auckland city and when she turned five, she was enrolled in the Melmerley Ladies' School in the suburb of Parnell. The Great War broke out in 1914 and like so many other heroic Kiwis, her father left to battle it out with the Kaiser's armies in the killing fields of Europe for the Mother Country. The next years saw the family's finances take a sharp downturn due to Frederick's absence and the loss of income that this entailed. Ellen, the quintessential woman that she was, steered the family through the dire straits successfully. In addition to making sure that the family never slipped on to the bread line, she also succeeded in maintaining the level of her daughter's welfare and development.

In 1915, the brothers Leo and Vivian Walsh flew the first flying boat on Auckland Harbour and later formed the New Zealand Flying School at Kohimarama Harbourin Mission Bay to train flying-boat pilots for war service. Accompanied by her mother, little Jean was a regular visitor to Mission Bay to watch the machines roar into the sky, defying the force of gravity with seemingly contemptuous ease. She was apparently, also quite enthralled by the feats of other aviators of the time like the Australian Bert Hinkler and the British Alcock and Brown.

In 1919, her father returned to the fold, but there was no amelioration in the general family situation. For various personal reasons, her parents fell out in a series of acrimonious and dolorific altercations and split up in about a year. The family split up along gender lines, with Jean electing to go with her beloved mother and her brothers going with their father.

Education

Jean, with the help of funds from her father, enrolled in the Ladies' College in Remuera, another suburb of Auckland. According to later accounts, she excelled in many subjects and won prizes in various disciplines there. Jean was now a pretty teenager who showed all signs of blossoming into the breathtakingly lovely woman she would later be. However, she acquired a reputation as a solitary person walking an eremetic path in her social life.

In 1924, taking a step that followed the normal career trend for women in those days, she enrolled in a secretarial school and also took ballet and piano classes. She proved to be a gifted pianist and a talented ballet dancer though she seemed to be all set to follow the tried, true and beaten path that the rest of the population had hacked through.

Lucky Lindy and Smithy

In 1927, the plucky American aviator, Charles "Lucky Lindy" Lindbergh piloted a Ryan NYP monoplane with the moniker "The Spirit Of St.Louis" across the mighty Atlantic, all by himself. The very next year, an Australian RFC bomber pilot who was awarded the Military Cross by King George VI, Charles Kingsford Smith and his friends showed that the Pacific was no great hindrance either to the new lords of the skies in his Fokker Tri-motor "Southern Cross".

These glorious affairs fired up Jean's interest in flying and she managed to persuade her father to take her to a celebratory dinner in Auckland in which Smith was the guest of honour. Little did the great man know that the sweet girl was in deadly earnest when she announced to him and her father that she was going to learn to fly. Even though her father, having witnessed a multitude of flying accidents in the dark days of the Great war, considered the whole idea egregious, her mother was not one to be put off by what she must have considered trivial perils. She took her daughter to Australia where she wrangle a flight with Smith in his Southern Cross. This experience changed her views radically again. Now , not only did she want to fly, she also wanted to be renowned for it.

The Rough Road

Early in 1930 Jean's piano found a new home, the proceeds from its sale paying for tickets for her and her mother to sail to England so that she could take flying lessons. She joined the London Aeroplane Club and took lessons at the Stag Lane Aerodrome, while staying with her brother John, who had forged a career for himself in London as an actor of good repute, having acted in such movies as 'Under The Greenwood Tree', 'Men Like These', 'Church Mouse' and 'For those in Peril'. In December that year, she created the first star in her yet inchoate galaxy of records by attaining the very first British Air Ministry 'A' Licence ever gained by a New Zealand woman.

Not one to rest on her laurels, in 1931, she immediately began the Herculean task of raising money to fund her publicly stated first goal of beating the solo England to Australia flight record set by Amy Johnson earlier in the year. This necessitated a trip to New Zealand that did not prove to be felicitous given the then prevalent economical climate. She returned to England, seeking a 'B' licence that she hoped would bolster her attempts at getting the elusive sponsor. At this point, for reasons that are not very clear, she apparently had a heated quarrel with her brother and moved out of his house and moved into a bedsit that is described as 'seedy' by other chroniclers.

Knights in Shining Armour

The 'B' licence that she craved came at a rather high price - 500 pounds to be more precise. As providence would have it, a New Zealand pilot serving with the RAF by name Fred Truman fell deeply in love with her at this juncture. Following the timeless tradition of Cyrano de Bergerac and his ilk, the love-struck fighter-pilot made a grand gesture to prove his love by withdrawing his life's savings and surrendering it at the feet of the woman he loved, expecting only her acquiescence to his impending proposal of matrimony. But, not one to be fettered by the ties of home and hearth, Jean spurned him, gained her 'B' licence in December 1932, walked out of his life and made no effort to pay him back either. It is probably shows the strength of Fred's love for her, in that he did not pursue the matter further or cause her any embarrassment after she became world famous later in life.

The next man in her life was a young Englishman by name Victor Dorée, who bought her a De Havilland Gipsy Moth DH-60 using 400 pounds that he borrowed from his family of prosperous linen merchants.

She used this aircraft in April 1933 on an attempt to beat Amy Johnson's time to Australia. She was threatened by a sandstorm in Iraq, which sent her little moth into a dangerous spin from which she recovered with great difficulty and landed safely. She slept under the wing overnight and started off again the next morning for Australia, but was brought down again by another sandstorm over Baluchistan. The defiant aviatrix dusted off everything that Mother Nature threw at her off her flying jacket and took off again for the southern continent. However, her poor old DH60, that had already done at least 100,000 miles, did not share her enthusiasm for riding roughshod over the forces of nature and it's engine gave up over Karachi, where it was wrecked as she tried to land at the airfield.

With the help of Lord Wakefield, the head of the Castrol Oil Company, a sponsor of aviation related events, she and her DH60 returned to England. She tried to persuade Dorée to buy her another Moth, but failed to do so and Dorée in turn failed in continuing to be the object of her affection.

She then got engaged to London stockbroker Edward Walter. But she was still looking for a way to acquire a new aircraft in which she could take another stab at beating Amy Johnson's now-three-year-old record. Impressed by the grit and determination she had displayed in her first attempt and a letter of introduction that she got from Sir Geoffrey De Havilland, Lord Wakefield came to her rescue by buying her another DH60, rejoicing under the registration of G-AARB, for 240 pounds.

In April 1934, she took off for Australia again. However, this trip ended in disaster nearer to home as she ran out of fuel on the outskirts of Rome and had to crash-land after weaving through a maze of radio masts in semi-darkness and almost severing her lip. As she had to spend the week in Italy, the chances of breaking Amy's record were gone and she had the DH60 repaired and flew back to England.

The Sweet Taste of Success

On the 8th of May 1934, the indomitable girl borrowed the lower wings of Walter's own DH60 and struck out for Australia for the third time. Fourteen days and twenty-two and a half hours later, the little biplane roared in to land in Darwin, Australia, to a tumultuous welcome, having beaten Amy's record by about four days. She achieved the world celebrity status she had been working for so long and so hard almost overnight.

In the series of grants and lectures that followed, the beautiful girl impressed everyone with her charm, poise and ability on both sides of the Tasman Sea, which she croseed by sea. She never lost a chance to credit her mother with being the inspiration for her success, to whom she sent the famous telegram that read

"Darling we've done it. The aeroplane, you, me."

As a footnote, while she was in Sydney, she met and fell in love with an Australian airline pilot by name Beverly Shepherd and promptly broke off her engagement to Walter, who,in a quite unTruman-like manner, responded by sending her a bill for the wings she borrowed from him. However, with the poetic justice that is favoured so much by fate, the only man she seems to have actually wanted to marry died in a plane crash in 1937.

Given that her declared aspiration was to be ranked alongside the greatest people in aviation, she did not remain in the antipodes for long.

She flew back to England in the same aircraft, G-AARB, at the end of 1935 in the process becoming the first pilot to fly from England to Australia and back. As expected, she moved into the upper crust of British society and she basked in the adulations of the newspapers and the international aviation community. She was even employed by the RAF to give talks accompanying recruitment films, which was quite an achievement given the chauvinistic attitudes of those politically incorrect days. She was also presented by the wife of the High Commissioner of New Zealand to King Edward VIII at the Buckingham palace to be invested with the CBE.

Exit the Moth Enter The Gull

In the same year, she bought the most famous of her aircraft, a Percival Gull 6 registered as G-ADPR for 1750 pounds. In contrast to her earlier DH60s, the Gull was a monoplane and incorporated most of what was at the cutting edge of small plane technology in those times, incorporating advanced features like lightweight metal propellers, hydraulic brakes, automatic petrol pump, extra fuel, landing flaps and a powerful 200hp engine. In this aircraft, she set about cementing her place firmly amongst the stars of the aviation world.

The Flower Of The Sky

Then followed a long series of flights in which she broke more records than hearts.

She flew from West Africa to Brazil, 1900-mile journey in bad weather and equipped only with her watch, a compass and a map. This feat earned her a Order of the Southern Cross, the first ever awarded to a person not of royal birth. The dashing aviatrix was even made a honorary member of three air forces!

For a while, she rented a cottage near Hatfield, Hertfordshire, in England with her mother and disappeared from public view. This would be one of the first inklings of her soon to be famous secretive nature , that later earned her the epithet "The Garbo of the Skies" from the press.

On October 16, 1936, she came out of seclusion in a spectacular fashion, to make the much-awaited flight from England to Auckland, New Zealand. Her mother country responded to her most famous daughter's visit magnificently. When she landed in Mangere Airport, she caused a thirteen mile traffic jam on the roads leading to it! It was when she visited her place of birth, Rotorua, that she was presented with a chief's feather cloak and awarded the title 'Hine-O-Te-Rangi' by the Arawa tribe of the mighty Maori.

Soon afterwards, she accumulated a whole bouquet of international honours like the Britannia Trophy, Harmon International Trophy, the Freedom of the City of London, Medal of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale and so on, till the list gets unnervingly exhausting after a while for the researcher.

She never neglected the value of style and elegance though and took great pains to ensure that she always showed her best face to the world. She always brought evening dresses along with her for attending receptions and never emerged from the Gull without applying her makeup and dressed in her trademark white flying dress. It is quite hard, and has proved to be impossible for this researcher, to find an archived picture of her looking dishevelled or otherwise the worse for wear. Such is the importance of the small details that go into the creation of an enduring legend. In 1938, she wrote her memoirs entitled "My Life".

The Second World War

Unlike Amy Johnson, who took active part in the Air Transport Auxiliary and was even killed while on duty, Jean was not allowed to fly and her Gull was requisitioned for the war effort by the RAF. She spent the war driving an ambulance for the Anglo-French Ambulance Corps and giving lectures around Britain to raise money for the war effort, with the National Savings Committee.

During this time, She fell in love with an RAF Bomber pilot who she refers to only a 'Richard' in her unpublished memoirs. But as luck would have it, he too was killed in action over Europe.

The Final Years

The war spelled the effective end of her flying adventures. The giant strides made in the field of technology during the war made flying to hither-to remote and unreachable corners of the world , a matter of course.

In 1946, she went with her mother to live in Jamaica, where she counted Noel Coward amongst her select group of friends. In 1953, she and her mother returned to Europe where they spent the next seven years on a nomadic motor tour.

In 1960, they bought a villa in Los Boliches near Malaga, Spain and settled down. They left for Madeira in the Canary islands in 1965 for an extended holiday. But her mother died at the age of 87 at Tenerife and Jean refused to leave her mother's bones alone there, buying a tiny apartment in Puerto de la Cruz which became her home for the next sixteen years.

In 1969, 1970 and 1977, she made brief forays to England and New Zealand amidst a blaze of publicity created by the press. However, the world had changed a lot in the last 30 years and disappointingly for her most people were unaware of her fame in her heyday. However, her charisma was still astonishingly strong and she is rumoured to have had an affair with a company executive in New Zealand and a few marriage proposals as well, all this at the age of 60 plus!

In1982, she packed up and left for England, where she stayed with her publisher, but soon left for Majorca again, in October of the same year. She disappeared completely and no one knew about her whereabouts for five years.

In 1987, it emerged that she had died on 22nd November 1982, aged 73, of a pulmonary abscess caused by a dog bite and had ben buried in a pauper' mass grave in Palma.

Thus ended the saga of the courageous, skilful, elegant, poised, accomplished, determined, exceedingly beautiful and absolutely ruthless aviatrix from the edge of the British Empire. Her name lives on most prominently in the International terminal of Auckalnd Airport which is named after her, the pavilion created in her honour in the Museum of Transportation and technology in Auckland, The Jean batten memorial Trophy and the Jean batten FlyIn at Rotorua.