Unpublished crash photos show end of Amy Johnson’s flight and her marriage

Taken by a local resident and stored in a family album, these photographs of rescue workers attending to the Yorkshire aviator and her husband in 1933 have never been published before.

Dr David Marchant, registrar at East Riding Museums, said their donation by a nephew of photographer Edna Nichols Jacobsen, was a bolt from the blue. “I have never seen any hard-copy pictures of the crash before,” he said. “These are really unusual and quite exciting.

“We have to assume that the photographer was near the scene in Bridgeport, Connecticut.”

Ms Johnson’s husband, the Scottish pilot Jim Mollison, is believed to have been at the controls of their aircraft, which bore the name Seafarer, when it ran out of fuel en route to New York. Neither was badly hurt.

“There are some suggestions that he had pushed to try and keep going when he should have changed course,” Dr Marchant said. “It was clear that Amy and Jim weren’t getting on well, and you really have to read between the lines here. They were both very strong characters.

“Amy eventually went back England on her own.”

The pictures will go on display in a gallery dedicated to the Hull-born Ms Johnson at the Georgian country house of Sewerby Hall, near Bridlington, whose public opening she performed in 1936.

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