A STROUD woman who was one of the last surviving Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) members to serve during the Battle of Britain, has died.

Joan Fanshawe, 98, was visiting her daughters Althea and Dionys who live in Auckland, New Zealand, and she was taken ill while baking a Christmas cake. She later died in hospital.

During the Second World War she was a ‘plotter’ during the Battle of Britain.

The aerial battle was fought in the skies above Southern England through the summer of 1940.

As one of ten specialists, she worked in shifts tracking German Luftwaffe planes as they crossed the English Channel on their way to bomb London.

Based in the operations room at Uxbridge in West London, the WAAFs also radioed information about the German planes to the defending Royal Air Force (RAF) squadrons.

She was on duty on September 15, 1940, the day the battle peaked with 1,500 RAF and Luftwaffe planes battling it out in the skies above London and the surrounding counties.

It was on this day that Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited the operations room, and he enquired about how many more RAF planes would be sent aloft.

In answer, Air Chief Marshal Keith Park bluntly told him there were none left, they were all either currently airborne, refuelling or shot down.

After the war, historians concluded that it was on September 15 the RAF finally won the summer-long battle.

Mrs Fanshawe, whose maiden name was Moxon, joined the WAAF aged 19 when the Second World War broke out, saying that since her father had no sons, she would volunteer instead.

Last year she was a guest at the RAF centenary celebrations in London, and at the premiere of the documentary Spitfire, about the men, women and aircraft involved in the Battle of Britain victory.

Last summer she also enjoyed a flight in a propeller driven acrobatic plane, alongside her son Lionel, who also lives in Stroud.

In 2007 she gave a reading at the Westminster Abbey Battle of Britain Day service, and she has also appeared in a number of documentaries about the war.

Her funeral, attended by about 60 people, was held at the St Elizabeth Anglican Church in Manurewa, New Zealand, on December 28.

Her ashes are to be returned to Stroud where they will be interred.