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Mary Bell (aviator)
Mary Teston Luis Bell (3 December 1903 – 6 February 1979) was an Australian aviator and founding leader of the Women's Air Training Corps (WATC), a volunteer organisation that provided support to the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) during World War II. She also helped establish the Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF), the first and largest women's wartime service in the country, which grew to number more than 18,000 members by 1944. Born Mary Fernandes in Tasmania, she married RAAF officer John Bell in 1923 and obtained a pilot's licence in 1927. Given temporary command of the WAAAF on its formation in 1941, she was passed over as its inaugural Director in favour of corporate executive Clare Stevenson. Bell refused the post of Deputy Director and resigned, but subsequently rejoined and served until the final months of the war. She and her husband later became farmers. Nicknamed "Paddy",〔Thomson, ''The WAAAF in Wartime Australia'', pp. 37–39〕 Mary Bell died in 1979 at the age of seventy-five.
==Early life and WATC==
Born on 3 December 1903 in Launceston, Tasmania, Mary Bell was the daughter of Rowland Walker Luis Fernandes, an English-born clerk, and his wife Emma. She attended Church of England Girls' Grammar School, Launceston and St Margaret's School, Devonport, before commencing work in a solicitor's office at the age of fourteen. She married John Bell (1889–1973), a Royal Australian Air Force officer and World War I veteran of Gallipoli and the Australian Flying Corps, at St Andrew's Anglican Church in Brighton, Victoria on 19 March 1923. They had one daughter.〔(Bell, Mary Teston Luis ) at Australian Dictionary of Biography. Retrieved on 18 October 2009.〕
From 1925 until early 1928, the Bells lived in Britain while John attended RAF Staff College, Andover and acted as RAAF liaison officer to the Royal Air Force. Interested in aviation since her teens, Mary learnt to fly in England and in April 1927 qualified for a Grade 'A' private pilot's licence.〔〔Thomson, ''The WAAAF in Wartime Australia'', p. 335〕 Returning to Australia, she was the first female to gain a pilot's licence in Victoria, on 20 March 1928. The following year, she became the first Australian woman to qualify as a ground engineer.〔Thomson, ''The WAAAF in Wartime Australia'', p. 27〕
By 1939, the Bells had moved to Brisbane, where John was Queensland manager for Airlines of Australia Ltd, having left the RAAF in 1929. Mary became leader of forty or so members of the Women's National Emergency Legion Air Wing who had volunteered to assist with aircraft maintenance during times of war. Determining that their objectives would not be met in their existing organisation, on 17 July they formed a new paramilitary group, the Women's Air Training Corps (WATC), and elected Bell its commander. She soon expanded the WATC into a national organisation, with Commandants leading each state's chapter, and herself as Australian Commandant.〔〔 Bell wrote to Air Vice Marshal Richard Williams, with whom she was acquainted via her husband and through aviation circles, advocating the establishment of a women's branch of the RAAF similar to the RAF's Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). Among other things, she pointed out that female volunteers such as hers were already supporting the Air Force in driving, nursing and clerical duties.〔Thomson, ''The WAAAF in Wartime Australia'', p. 42〕 The WATC was one of a number of women's voluntary organisations whose members were keen to support the military, arguing that their personnel provided a ready-made pool of skilled staff for auxiliary services, saving the government time and money associated with training unskilled labour.〔Hasluck, (''The Government and the People 1939–1941'', pp. 401–408 )〕
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