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Air Commandant Dame Felicity Hyde Peake (May 1, 1913 – November 2, 2002) was the founding director of the Women’s Royal Air Force (WRAF). She started flying when her first husband, Jock Hanbury, took up the hobby in 1935. Her husband was later killed in an air accident when his plane crashed in Surrey during a night-flying exercise. At 27 she was a section officer who commanded the 250 strong WAAF Unit at Biggin Hill Airport during the Battle of Britain. On August 30, 1940 she coordinated the emergency repines when a bomb hit an air raid shelter and 39 people were killed. Her experience was used as the basis of Susannah York’s character, Maggie Harvey, in the 1969 Battle of Britain film where the character counts the bodies of WAAF members. In peacetime she was appointed a trustee of the Imperial War Museum in 1963, she was its chairman from 1986 to 1988. She founded the Friends of the Imperial War Museum, later becoming its president.
