* Astronomy

On 5 January 1941, while flying an Airspeed Oxford for the Air Transport Auxiliary from Blackpool to RAF Kidlington near Oxford, Amy Johnson went off course in adverse weather conditions. Reportedly out of fuel, she drowned after bailing out into the Thames Estuary.
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The mysterious circumstance of how she came to be so far off course and her disappearance under the waves has lead to various theories. One maintains that she was flying a spy mission and was shot down by either friendly or enemy fire, while another speculates that she staged her own death.
But reports from two men associated with the Haslemere offer two different, but feasible, scenarios. From statements given for Probate Court proceedings soon after her disappearance, one Haslemere seaman said Johnson drifted to close to the ship's stern and the heaving seas brought the ship down on top of her. And more recently, during a BBC interview, a wartime clerk at the RAF flight office at Sheerness says that he prepared a report for 5 January 1941 for another of the ship's seaman. In it the seaman claims that because Johnson was unable to reach the ropes tossed to her, someone threw the engines in reverse and accidentally drew her into the propeller.
She was the first member of the British Air Transport Auxiliary to die in service.
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