Mandy Hickson was accepted onto RAF pilot training, in her own words, as a “test case,” to see how far she’d get before she failed. Instead, she became one of a handful of women to fly combat missions on the frontline of RAF fast jet operations, flying reconnaissance and strike missions over Iraq and Kuwait.
The drive behind all of it goes back much further than the cockpit, to her single mother, a rusting Hillman Minx, a caravan with no toilet, and a wrong turn around the Paris ring road.
In this episode, host Rajan Datar talks to Mandy about growing up in Manchester with a single parent, and how her mother’s determination to travel on almost no money set the tone for everything that followed. Mandy first flew with the Air Cadets at 13, twice failed RAF selection tests later found to carry significant bias against women, and eventually flew a Tornado GR4 on operations, making split-second life or death decisions.
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