Freydis Sharland

Freydis Sharland ( Leaf; 22 September 1920 – 24 May 2014) was a pioneering woman pilot and one of the first women to get RAF wings. Early life Freydis Leaf was born in Cambridge to Catherine (Kay-Shuttleworth, her father was Ughtred Kay-Shuttleworth of Gawthorpe Hall) and Charles Leaf. She was the middle child of three: two boys and a girl. Her father was a meteorologist and archaeologist who served in both the First World War, as an Army officer, and the Second World War, as an officer of the Royal Marines; he was, in the meantime, also an Olympic gold-medallist. She was educated at Ancaster Gate school, Bexhill, East Sussex, then Wycombe Abbey school, Buckinghamshire. War-service When her father and brother Derek started to learn to fly in 1937, Freydis insisted on the same opportunity: they all learned to fly at the Marshall flying school in Cambridge. When the war began, Leaf volunteered as a nurse in the Red Cross in Colchester, Essex while trying to get into the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) for over a year. She went on to work with the Aeronautical Inspection Directorate.