writes…
,
younger daughter of Harry
George and Muriel Hawker died on December 24th, 2013, aged 93. She was
named after the Danish ship Mary that had picked up her father and his
navigator, Mackenzie Grieve, from mid-Atlantic at the end of their
Transatlantic attempt in May1919.
Mary joined the Royal Air Force in 1941, working at Medmenham for the Photographic Interpretation (PI) Branch. Her duties included model making. One was of Altafjord in Northern Norway where the German battleship Tirpitz was docked, posing a major threat to the Arctic Convoys.
The model played a vital role in the bombing raid that led to the disabling of the battleship on the 15th September 1944. The surrounding area was so finely detailed that when shown to a group of Norwegians who were from that part of Norway they assumed Mary had been there herself.
After the war she became a medical artist and, in 1949, a founder
member of The Medical Artists' Association of Great Britain.
In 1950 she married Nigel Steele (D 1998), settling
in Lindfield where she lived for the rest of her life. Mary is survived
by her three daughters, Anna, Jenny and Cathy and seven grandchildren.