Margot Duhalde

Margot Duhalde (born 12 December 1920) is a Chilean pilot who served with the Air Transport Auxiliary of the Royal Air Force in World War II.

Life
Duhalde learnt to fly with the Air Club of Chile in Santiago. At the outbreak of World War II, Duhalde volunteered with a French-Chilean group and travelled by ship to Europe with the intention of joining the French Free Forces as a pilot. She arrived in Liverpool, England, in April 1941, and was initially detained in jail in London for 5 days as a suspected spy. On her release, she was informed that the French Free Forces did not accept women pilots, and she was instead assigned domestic work and kitchen chores. She subsequently learned that the Royal Air Force was willing to accept women pilots, and she applied to join the Air Transport Auxiliary of the RAF, an organisation responsible for transporting aircraft. Although she spoke almost no English, she was trained as a transport pilot to enable her to fly both single and twin-engine aircraft, and both British and American machines. Over the next four years, Duhalde moved more than 900 aircraft, of 70 different types, from English bases to combat zones in France, Belgium and the Netherlands. She rose to become a first officer in the Women's Section of ATA.

After the war, in 1945, Duhalde flew warplanes for the French Air Force. She was France's first female combat pilot. She also served as a transport pilot for the French, based in Meknes, Morocco. In 1946 the French asked her to complete a tour of South America demonstrating French aircraft; she travelled to Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil and Chile.

In 1947 she returned to Chile, however the national airline LAN did not hire women as pilots at that time. Instead, she took a job as a private pilot for a prominent businessman until 1949. Later she opened her own flying school and worked as a flight instructor and as an air traffic controller in the air force.

Honours and awards
In 1946 Duhalde was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor, and in 2007 she was made a Commander of the National Order of the Legion of Honor.

In 2009 Duhalde received the Veteran's Badge from the British ambassador in Santiago, Howard Drake, for her work with the British Air Transport Auxiliary during World War II.