Pauline Gower

Pauline Gower
Pauline Gower at a Women's Engineering Society awards dinner in the 1930s
Born	Pauline Mary de Peauly Gower 22 July 1910 Tonbridge, Kent, England
Died	2 March 1947(1947-03-02) (aged 36) Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England
Nationality	British
Occupation	Pilot
Spouse(s)	William Cusack Fahie (m. 1945)
Parent(s)	Sir Robert Gower (father)

Pauline Mary de Peauly Gower Fahie (22 July 1910 – 2 March 1947) was a British pilot and writer who established the women's branch of the Air Transport Auxiliary during the Second World War.

Daughter of MP Sir Robert Gower, and educated at Beechwood Sacred Heart School, she first flew with Alan Cobham and was fascinated by flying. In August 1931 she established a joy-riding and air taxi service in Kent. In 1932 to support British Hospitals, Gower toured the country with an Air Circus, giving air pageants in 200 hundred towns. She also wrote for Girl's Own Paper and Chatterbox and published a collection of poetry, Piffling Poems for Pilots, in 1934. As a writer she was acquainted with W. E. Johns whose character Worrals was based on herself as well as Amy Johnson.

In 1935 she was appointed as a council member for the Women's Engineering Society. She chaired a meeting on "The History of British Airships", where Mr. M. Langley championed the airboat and Hon. A. F. de Moleyns the airship. In 1936, Gower was the first woman to be awarded the Air Ministry's Second Class Navigator's Licence. Later that year, Gower and her colleague Dorothy Spicer ('daring aeronauts') presented a technical paper at the Women's Engineering Society Annual General Meeting on the treatment of metals for aircraft engineers. In 1938, she was appointed a civil defence commissioner in London with the Civil Air Guard. That year her work on women in aviation—Women with Wings—was published. On the outbreak of the Second World War, Gower made use of her high-level connections to propose the establishment of a women's section in the new Air Transport Auxiliary —the ATA would be responsible for ferrying military aircraft from factory or repair facility to storage unit or operational unit—to the authorities.