Jim Mollison

James Allan ("Jim") Mollison
Captain James A Mollison at Floyd Bennett Field, 23 October 1936 in front of his Bellanca Flash.
Born	(1905-04-19)19 April 1905 Glasgow, Scotland
Died	30 October 1959(1959-10-30) (aged 54) London, England
Occupation	Aviator
Spouse(s)	Amy Johnson (divorced)(wife)

James Allan Mollison MBE (19 April 1905 – 30 October 1959) was a Scottish pioneer aviator who set many records during the rapid development of aviation in the 1930s.

Born on 19 April 1905 in Glasgow, Scotland, he was educated at The Glasgow Academy. Mollison was attracted at an early age to flying. Obtaining his Royal Air Force (RAF) Short Service Commission at 18, he was the youngest officer in the service, and upon completion of training, was posted to Waziristan.

At the age of 22, Mollison became a flying instructor at Central Flying School (CFS), again setting the record for being the youngest in this role. Shortly after, he transferred to the RAF Reserve and devoted his time to civil aviation. In 1928–29, he served as an instructor with the South Australian Aero Club in Adelaide, leaving that position to become a pilot with Eyre Peninsular Airways and Australian National Airways.

Whilst gaining a reputation as a playboy, Mollison was a highly skilled pilot who, like many others, took to record breaking as a means of "making his name." In July–August 1931, Mollison set a record time of eight days, 19 hours for a flight from Australia to England, and in March 1932, a record for flying from England to South Africa in 4 days, 17 hours.

Mollison had flown commercially for Charles Kingsford Smith's ill-fated Australian National Airways. During one of his commercial flights, he met the equally famous aviator Amy Johnson, whom he proposed to only eight hours after meeting her, and while still in the air. Johnson accepted; they married on July 1932, and she went off to break her husband's England to South Africa record. They were dubbed The Flying Sweethearts by the press and public.

Mollison continued his record-breaking attempts and on 18 August 1932 was the first pilot to perform an East-to-West solo trans-Atlantic flight from Portmarnock in Ireland to Pennfield, New Brunswick, Canada. In February 1933 Mollison flew from England to Brazil in 3 days, 13 hours, using Africa as a stop-over continent, a record time and the first solo crossing. By then, he and his wife began to plan a record breaking flight across the world. On 22 July 1933, they took off from Pendine Sands in Wales on a non-stop flight to New York, but were forced to crash land in Bridgeport, Connecticut, just short of their target, after running out of fuel. He and his wife were both injured, and the plane broken apart by souvenir seekers.