Plane Named For Crippled N.Z. Girl

Northern Advocate, 27 January 1944, Page 2

Plane Named For Crippled N.Z. Girl

(Official R.N.Z.A.F. News Service) NEW GEORGIA. Nineteen-year-old Gloria Lyons lies in Christchurch Public Hospital with tuberculosis of the spine. Patient but cheerful, she faces a stay there of two years

At a forward Pacific base of the R.N.Z.A.F. stands another "Gloria Lyons.” a sleek Warhawk fighter, and in the pilot's cockpit a small typewritten note is pasted: "To tire pilot: Gloria Lyons Is our 4 S.U. mascot. She is doing a long term in hospital and we want both our Glorias to last a long time.—l S.U.. Dee., ’43."

Four young New Zealand airman of No. 4 Servicing Unit, attached to a New Zealand tighter wing, sat in their tent one evening reading mail which had come in that day. For one, there were seven or eight letters. Another also received a good batch, but for the other two it was a lean mail day. So they got heads together and not long afterwards this advertisement appeared in a Christchurch newspaper; “Two lonely airmen wish to correspond with two smart young ladies of 18-21. with a view to friendship; interests dancing, music, sport; photo if possible."

Caught imagination

Among the replies came one, rather diffidently, from Gloria Lyons, on behalf of herself and a fellow-patient. A few more letters broke the ice and now a regular correspondence flows. She tells the airman to whom she writes of what goes on at home in New Zealand, he describes to her what life is like in' the tropics. It is amazing how things get round in these camps, but the airman did not have to stand chipping from his mates. Instead, the story caught their imagination; acid when a Warhawk with the identification letter G was passing through the maintenance line, the idea blossomed in some head of naming the fighter after the sporting, bedridden girl and adopting her as the unit's mascot. So while Gloria Lyons of the Pacific frontline takes the air with her colleagues to beat the Japanese out of the skies her namesake follows their fortunes keenly and hopeiellv and the thoughts of the boys of No. 4 Serving Unit are with the welfare of both.