The Alphabet Mafia That Pave The Way

Roberta Cowell

Roberta Elizabeth Marshall Cowell, born on April 8th, 1918, was a British racing driver and Second World War fighter pilot. She was the first known British trans woman to undergo sex reassignment surgery.

Roberta Cowell was born one of three children of Major-General Sir Ernest Marshall Cowell KBE CB (1886–1971) and Dorothy Elizabeth Miller (1886–1962).

Sir Ernest was a prominent surgeon who served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War and became a surgeon at Croydon General Infirmary between the wars. During the Second World War, he again served in the army and was the Director of Medical Services for Allied forces in North Africa from 1942 to 1944. In 1944, he was made honorary surgeon to King George VI. Post-war, he was Public Medical Officer for the Allied High Commission (the Allied body that governed occupied Germany after the war).

Roberta Cowell attended Whitgift School, a boys' public school in Croydon, and was an enthusiastic member of the school's Motor Club, along with John Cunningham, who would later be famous as an RAF night fighter ace and test pilot. Towards the end of her school days, she visited Belgium, Germany, and Austria with a school friend. At the time, one of her hobbies was photography and filmmaking, and she was briefly arrested in Germany for shooting a cine film of a group of Nazis drilling. She secured her release by agreeing to destroy the film but was able to substitute unused film stock and keep the original footage.

Cowell left school at the age of 16 to join General Aircraft Limited as an apprentice aircraft engineer but soon left to join the Royal Air Force, becoming an acting pilot officer on probation on August 4th, 1936; Cowell began pilot training but was discharged because of air-sickness.

In 1936, Cowell began studying engineering at University College London. Also in that year, she began motor-racing, winning her class at the Land's End Speed Trial in a Riley. She gained initial experience of the sport by sneaking into the area where cars were serviced at the Brooklands racing circuit, wearing mechanic's overalls, and offering help to any driver or mechanic who wanted it. By 1939, she owned three cars and had competed in the 1939 Antwerp Grand Prix.

On December 28th, 1940, Cowell was commissioned into the Royal Army Service Corps as the second lieutenant, and in June 1941, married Diana Margaret Zelma Carpenter (1917-2006), who also had been an engineering student at UCL with an interest in motor racing. Cowell served in Iceland before transferring from the Army to the RAF on January 24th, 1942 with the rank of pilot officer (temporary). She had obtained a private pilot's license before the war and completed RAF flying training at RAF Ansty.

Cowell served a tour with a front–line Spitfire squadron and then briefly as an instructor. By June 1944, she was flying with No. 4 Squadron RAF, a squadron assigned to the task of aerial reconnaissance. During the course of the war, the squadron had flown a variety of aircraft types but by mid–1944 it was flying the Spitfire PR. XI, an unarmed, camera-equipped version of the Supermarine Spitfire. Shortly before the D-Day landings, on June 4th, 1944, she had a lucky escape when the oxygen system of her Spitfire malfunctioned at 31,000 feet (9,400 m) over Fruges, France. She passed out but the aircraft continued flying on its own for around an hour over German-occupied France while being subjected to German anti-aircraft fire, she regained semi-consciousness at low altitude and was able to fly back to the squadron's base at RAF Gatwick.

By October 1944, 4 Squadron was based at Deurne, Belgium, on the outskirts of Antwerp, and its Spitfires were supplemented by an allocation of Hawker Typhoon FR IBs, a photo-reconnaissance version of the Hawker Typhoon fighter-bomber. On November 18th, 1944, Cowell was piloting one of a pair of Typhoons on a low-level sortie near Bocholt, Germany. Southeast of Kessel, Cowell attacked targets on the ground, but her aircraft's engine was knocked out and its wing holed by German anti-aircraft fire. Cowell was flying too low to bail out and instead jettisoned the cockpit canopy and glided her Typhoon to a successful deadstick crash-landing. She was able to contact her companion by radio and confirm she was unhurt before being captured by German troops. Cowell made two escape attempts, reasoning that the chances of success were greatest if the attempt was made quickly, while still close to the front–line. However, the attempts failed and she was taken further into Germany, spending several weeks in solitary confinement at an interrogation center for captured Allied aircrew, before being moved to the prisoner–of–war camp Stalag Luft I.