Roberta Elizabeth Marshall Cowell (8 April 1918 – 11 October 2011) was a British racing driver and Second World War fighter pilot.
Roberta Cowell was born on 8 April 1918 in Croydon, London, one of three children of Major-General Sir Ernest Marshall Cowell (1886–1971) and Dorothy Elizabeth Miller (1886–1962).
Roberta Cowell attended Whitgift School, a boys' public school in Croydon and was an enthusiastic member of the school's Motor Club, along with John Cunningham, who would later be famous as an RAF night fighter ace and test pilot.
Towards the end of her school days, she visited Belgium, Germany, and Austria with a school friend.
At the time, one of her hobbies was photography and filmmaking, and she was briefly arrested in Germany for shooting a cine film of a group of Nazis drilling.
She secured her release by agreeing to destroy the film, but was able to substitute unused film stock, and keep the original footage.
1936
Cowell left school at the age of 16 to join General Aircraft Limited as an apprentice aircraft engineer, but soon left to join the Royal Air Force, becoming an acting pilot officer on probation on 4 August 1936; Cowell began training, but was discharged because of airsickness.
In 1936, Cowell began studying engineering at University College London.
Also in that year, she began motor-racing, winning her class at the Land's End Speed Trial in a Riley.
She gained initial experience of the sport by sneaking into the area where cars were serviced at the Brooklands racing circuit, wearing mechanic's overalls, and offering help to any driver or mechanic who wanted it.
1939
By 1939, she owned three cars and had competed in the 1939 Antwerp Grand Prix.
1940
On 28 December 1940, Cowell was commissioned into the Royal Army Service Corps as second lieutenant.
1941
In June 1941, Cowell married Diana Margaret Zelma Carpenter (1917–2006), who also had been an engineering student at UCL with an interest in motor racing.
1942
In June 1941, she married, before transferring from the Army to the RAF on 24 January 1942 with the rank of pilot officer (temporary).
She had obtained a private pilot's licence before the war and completed RAF flying training at RAF Ansty.
Cowell served a tour with a front-line Spitfire squadron and then briefly as an instructor.
1944
By June 1944, she was flying with No. 4 Squadron RAF, a squadron assigned to the task of aerial reconnaissance.
During the course of the war the squadron had flown a variety of aircraft types but by mid–1944 it was flying the Spitfire PR.
XI, an unarmed, camera-equipped version of the Supermarine Spitfire.
Shortly before the D-Day landings, on 4 June 1944, she had a lucky escape when the oxygen system of her Spitfire malfunctioned at 31000 ft over Fruges, France.
She passed out but the aircraft continued flying on its own for around an hour over German-occupied France while being subjected to German anti-aircraft fire, she regained semi-consciousness at low altitude and was able to fly back to the squadron's base at RAF Gatwick.
By October 1944, 4 Squadron was based at Deurne, Belgium, on the outskirts of Antwerp and its Spitfires were supplemented by an allocation of Hawker Typhoon FR IBs, a photo-reconnaissance version of the Hawker Typhoon fighter-bomber.
On 18 November 1944, Cowell was piloting one of a pair of Typhoons on a low-level sortie near Bocholt, Germany.
South east of Kessel, Cowell attacked targets on the ground, but her aircraft's engine was knocked out and its wing holed by German anti-aircraft fire.
Cowell was flying too low to bail-out and instead jettisoned the cockpit canopy and glided her Typhoon to a successful deadstick crash-landing.
She was able to contact her companion by radio and confirm she was unhurt before being captured by German troops.
Cowell made two escape attempts, reasoning that the chances of success were greatest if the attempt was made quickly, while still close to the front–line.
However, the attempts failed and she was taken further into Germany, spending several weeks in solitary confinement at an interrogation centre for captured Allied aircrew, before being moved to the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag Luft I.
Cowell remained a prisoner for around five months, occupying the time by teaching classes in automotive-engineering to fellow inmates.
In her biography, she describes the situational sexual behaviour shown by some of the camp's Allied prisoners, and her discomfort at being propositioned by prisoners who assumed she also wanted to take part in this.
She was offered the part of a woman in a camp theatrical production but turned it down, as she thought this would make her appear homosexual in the eyes of other prisoners.
Towards the end of the war, food became short at the camp; Cowell lost 50 lb in weight, and later described killing the camp's cats and eating them raw because of hunger.
1945
By April 1945, the advancing Red Army was approaching.
The initial German intention was to evacuate the camp, but the prisoners refused to leave.
After negotiations between the senior American officer and the Kommandant, the Germans guarding Stalag Luft I abandoned it and evacuated towards the west, leaving the prisoners behind.
The unguarded and undefended camp was reached by the Red Army on the night of 30 April 1945.
Commonwealth personnel were flown back to the United Kingdom some two weeks later, between 12 and 14 May, by aircraft of the United States Army Air Forces.
1946
After demobilisation, Cowell was engaged in a number of business ventures until, in 1946, she founded a motor-racing team and competed in events across Europe, including the Brighton Speed Trials and the Grand Prix at Rouen-Les-Essarts.
However her autobiography describes this as a time of great distress and clinical depression.
1951
She was the first known British trans woman to undergo gender-affirming surgery in 1951.
