‘Overdue reunion’: aviation hero’s long lost granddaughter uncovers secret past

In the spring of 1944, Elsie Barber, a member of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, had a fling with a Royal Air Force pilot named Arthur Brown, known as Buster. The liaison at the RAF base near High Ercall in Shropshire was clandestine. She was 24 and single, he was a recently married 21-year-old.

Buster died months later, on D-day, when his Mosquito fighter plane crashed in the Netherlands, leaving Elsie with a lonely dilemma. She was pregnant, and after giving birth to a daughter, made the decision to give her up for adoption.

The girl grew up unaware of her origins – until, decades later, she decided to investigate and discovered a tale of family secrets, heartbreak and glory. Judy Bain is now 81 years old and a living link to a legendary figure in aviation who was born on 23 July 140 years ago.

Elsie Barber in Women’s Auxiliary Air Force uniform. Photograph: Judy Bain

Buster’s father – Judy’s grandfather – was Arthur Whitten Brown senior, who with John Alcock completed the first nonstop transatlantic flight in 1919, crossing 1,950 miles (3,138km) from Canada to Ireland in 16 hours and 12 minutes, a feat that astonished and enthralled the world.

For aviation enthusiasts Brown’s birthday, 23 July 1886, has a melancholic tinge because when he died in 1948 – grief-stricken after the loss of Buster, his only child – it was believed he had no descendants. In fact he has seven: Judy, her two children and four grandchildren.

“One of the things that saddens me is that when he died, and his son died, there was no other family,” said Judy, speaking from her home in Perth, Australia. “Neither of them knew about me and there were no other relations at all.”

Arthur ‘Buster’ Brown junior in RAF uniform. Photograph: Judy Bain

Piecing together her family’s story proved bittersweet, but discovering the touch of celebrity was a welcome surprise. Alcock and Brown’s flight in a first world war Vickers Vimy biplane from Newfoundland to Clifden in County Galway was an exploit that showed the potential of long distance air travel and won acclaim and knighthoods for both men.

Buster followed his father into the RAF, married in 1943 and had his fling with Elsie while posted to the training base in Shropshire from January to March 1944. He was on a scouting mission when he was killed.

Later that year, Elsie gave up their baby for adoption to a couple in Cornwall. When Judy was about 10, the couple told her she was adopted, then shunned the topic. It was not a happy childhood, she said. “I didn’t fit into that family. I was adventurous and they weren’t.”

After studying social science at the University of Liverpool, Judy married a Scot, Andy Bain, and they moved to western Australia in the 1960s. Andy died of a brain tumour, leaving Judy to raise their son and daughter while juggling different jobs, including teaching.

In the 1990s, Judy, through a researcher, identified and traced her birth mother to Cornwall. Elsie was in her 70s and married with two adult children to Tom Salmon, a retired BBC TV journalist. Mother and daughter met in Cornwall in 1994, said Judy. “We got on really well.”

Judy Bain, right, with her birth mother, Elsie, in Cornwall in the 1990s. Photograph: Judy Bain

However, Elsie misidentified Judy’s father. She appeared to think the father was another RAF man with whom she had a relationship in 1944, and she died in 2000, at the age of 81, without identifying Buster.

Elsie’s daughter-in-law Elizabeth Salmon had a passion for genealogy and DNA research and with Judy’s permission investigated her parentage. “I’m like a jack russell, once I start, I never let go,” said Elizabeth. After establishing that the other RAF man was not the father, she identified Buster in 2020. “It was the eureka moment.”

Judy Bain and Elsie in the 1990s. Photograph: Paul Salmon

Judy had never heard of the doomed young pilot but as a schoolgirl had learned about his famous father. “It was exciting to discover that I had a historical grandparent,” she said. One of her four grandchildren – Brown’s great-great-grandson – has visited the biplane at London’s Science Museum.

Brendan Lynch, an Irish author who chronicled Alcock and Brown’s feat in a 2008 book, Yesterday We Were in America, published by the History Press, helped Salmon with her research on Brown and has forged a bond with Judy. He hopes she will attend a commemoration of the landing in Clifden.

Brendan Lynch, centre, with Tony Alcock, nephew of John Alcock, left, and Tony Kilmister, a friend of Arthur Brown, at the 2008 launch of Lynch’s book about the 1919 transatlantic flight. Photograph: Brendan Lynch

“At previous events there was an Alcock and I felt the absence of a Brown relative very acutely. It would mark a long overdue reunion and a fitting conclusion to one of aviation’s most daring feats.”

Illegitimate children bore a stigma in the 1940s, but Lynch believes the aviation pioneer would have embraced Judy had he known about her.

“As well as being a fearless flyer, Arthur Whitten Brown was known to his contemporaries as a thoughtful and considerate man. I am convinced that he would have braved the controversy of his son’s escapade and welcomed his granddaughter.”

Brown was still mourning Buster when he died in 1948, aged 62, from an overdose of sleeping tablets. Some say it was an accident, others suspect he took his own life. “I like to think that if he had met Judy he would have given her a good home, that it might have been a plus for him,” said Lynch.

Judy has inherited her grandfather’s taste for adventure. She drove a camper van across Australia and scuba dived into her 70s and despite a recent hip operation still adores the ocean. “I enjoy snorkelling. There’s a really good spot just down the road from me.”