Air Commodore Dame Felicity Hill
Director of the WRAF in the 1960s who forged a path for women to flourish in the modern Air Force
AIR COMMODORE DAME FELICITY HILL, who has died aged 103, was the first female to hold the rank of air commodore after members of the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF) assumed RAF ranks.
Felicity Barbara Hill was born in London on December 12 1915 and educated at St Margaret’s School, Folkestone. On the outbreak of the Second World War she tried to join the Wrens, but her application was slow to be processed.
While she was waiting, a friend joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) and encouraged her to do the same. The next day she travelled to Farnborough and in September 1939 was accepted into the 1,734-strong force.
She was marginally below the minimum height but a sympathetic medical orderly ignored the missing half-inch and she was accepted as an equipment assistant. Years later she commented: “I probably should never have got in.”
She failed her first officers’ selection board in 1940 because she was “too young” at 23. However, she attended the first WAAF NCO course and was promoted to corporal. She became an instructor at the new-entrant depot at West Drayton. In 1941 WAAF numbers were 2,700 strong, and a year later had reached 110,000.
Early entrants such as Felicity Hill who showed leadership potential were commissioned. In early 1941 she was posted as an officer to a bomber station, where she soon experienced
her first military funeral. In early 1941 she embarked on a long period of WAAF recruitment and training.
In 1944 she was attached to the Polish Section of the Directorate of Allied Air Forces Liaison. The following February she was sent to France to recruit Polish displaced persons for the Polish Air Force squadrons based in the UK. She then became responsible for training those she had selected.
“Despite air raids and loss of friends over five years in the UK,” she once reflected, “I did not really comprehend the devastation of war and people’s suffering until I went to France in that role.”
At the end of the war she served with the British Air Force of Occupation based in Hamburg, before being demobilised in April 1947.
Since auxiliaries were only recruited for war service, Felicity Hill immediately re-enlisted into the permanent women’s element that the RAF had decided to retain. On February 1 1949 this reverted to its original First World War title of the Women’s Royal Air Force. The serving women became members of the RAF subject to the Air Force Act in the same way as men.
After two years at the HQ Flying Training Command, she left for Singapore and the HQ of the Far East Air Force. She was responsible for the administration and welfare of serving airwomen and, with RAF units spread throughout the Far East, she travelled widely to meet them in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Malaya and Hong Kong.
Her return to the UK in 1951 heralded a long career responsible for the policy, career management, administration and welfare of airwomen. In 1956 she was the Inspector General of WRAF and in 1959 she became the station commander at the WRAF Depot at Hawkinge in Kent, continuing in the role when the depot moved to RAF Spitalgate, near Grantham. At the depot she was responsible for the recruitment and training of all noncommissioned women.
After a series of senior appointments in the MOD, in May 1966 she became the Director WRAF, the most senior women’s post in the RAF, in the rank of Air Commandant. She was also appointed an Honorary Aide-de-camp to the Queen. On August 1 1968 WRAF officers assumed RAF ranks and Dame Felicity, as she now was, became the WRAF’S first Air Commodore.
One of her happiest and most fulfilling tasks was to research and mastermind the tableaux charting the history of the WAAF and WRAF for the Royal Review of the RAF marking the its 50th anniversary in April 1968.
She retired in August 1969. Many years later, speaking of her time in the service, she commented: “The RAF were very good employers for women. They believed in equality before the word was even invented.”
Felicity Hill was appointed OBE in 1954 and DBE in 1966. When she retired to Winchester she occupied her time with hobbies and family. She was a keen bridge player, a knowledgeable and skilled gardener and a volunteer with her local Citizen’s Advice Bureau.
She was an avid reader and also wrote a couple of unpublished novels, along with an autobiography. She bore the increasing frailty and deafness of her final years with typical fortitude, and never lost either her fine sense of humour or her interest in people, family and events. The current Chief of the Air Staff described her as “an extraordinary character”.
Dame Felicity Hill was unmarried.
Dame Felicity Hill, born December 12 1915, died January 30 2019