Royal Air Force Observer’s and Air Gunner’s Flying Log Book (Form 1767) Belonging to WREN Jean Wilson Hird

Blue cloth-covered boards. A little rubbed at edges, some marks on front cover. The Flying Log Book of Leading WREN, subsequently Petty Officer and then Third Officer, Jean Wilson Hird, a radio mechanic in the Woman’s Royal Naval Service during the Second World War. Eight pages of the log book have been completed, showing PO Hird’s flights and flying times from her qualification as a radio mechanic in March 1942 to July 1945. Most of the flights appear to have been test flights testing radio equipment but by 1945 PO Hird making longer flights to Ireland etc. Includes details of aircraft flown, pilots and purposes etc. Also laid in to the log book are (1) Jean Wilson Hird’s Certificate of Service (showing her enrolment in the WRNS and service at HMS Pembroke, HMS Daedalus etc and noting her promotion, with a letter from HMS Ariel pinned on (2) Certificate of Appointment as a Third Officer for Jean Wilson Hird, dated 24 October 1934 and signed by Vera Laughton Mathews, then Director of the WRNS (3) contemporary photograph of a RAF aircraft – provisionally identified as a Fairey Fulmar II – and (4) a contemporary portrait photograph of a young woman in WREN uniform (it is tempting to think it may be a photograph of Jean Hird, but there is nothing to prove this). Log Books such as this, especially in such good condition, do not often survive. Log book for a WREN is scarce and unique in our experience.