Joined the WRNS training centre at Westfield College 1942 when wartime service took her to Aberdeen as an administrator then to the Fleet Air Arm’s night fighter school at Drem, near Edinburgh; she also worked as a cipher officer. Post-war she attended the navigation school Dryad, Millmeece, Staffordshire and Excellent. After training as a safety equipment officer at Gosport she was sent to Eglinton, Northern Ireland, then Malta where she had to test a new radio beacon intended to be stowed in parachute packs. Dropped into the sea in a rubber dinghy, she activated the beacon and waited to be found and rescued by a Sea Otter seaplane. In the winter of 1955-56 she jumped into the English Channel to test a new method of rescuing survivors from the sea by helicopter using a ‘Sproule net’ which could trawl a person out of the water even if he or she was unconscious; the net remained in use until the late 1970s. She also flew as aircrew in winching experiments in which she was lowered beneath a helicopter on to a barge in the Solent while directing the pilot (who could not see her) over the radio; she was appointed MBE for her work on these trials.