Danish WW2 Pilots

LACW Jytte Agnete Hawkins (née Wagner)

(1921 - 2008)

Jytte Agnete Hawkins (née Wagner) was one of the Danish volunteers in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. She enlisted in 1941 and ended service as Leading Aircraftwoman. Little is know of her service.

Jytte Agnete Wagner was born on 3 June 1921 in Svendborg, the daughter of machinist Adolf Kristian Uffe Wagner and Oline Wagner (née Larsen).[1] The family moved to Copenhagen in the mid-1920s.[2] At some point, presumably in the late 1930s, she moved to the UK.

Wagner volunteered for the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force during the Second World War (2018689).[3] The exact date is not known, but the service number indicate that it was in the second part of 1941.[4] There is no information on her service at this point, but at the end of the war she held the rank of Leadring Aircraftwoman.[5]

Wagner married Sub-Lt John Claude Hawkins, Royal Navy Voluntary Reserve, on 12 January 1943, and thus she became a naturalised British subject.[6] The couple settled in England after the war, but in 1948 they emigrated to Canada, where Wagner’s husband became a police officer in the Ontario Provincial Police.[7]

Endnotes

[1] DNA: Parish register, Svendborg, Skt Nicolaj.

[2] DNA: Census of Denmark 1925 and 1930.

[3] NA: AIR 78/73.

[4] Wagner’s service number is part of a block of numbers (2000000 to 2099999) allotted for WAAF enlistment in May 1941. The next block of numbers (from 2100000) was allotted in August 1942.

[5] Frihedsmuseets database over søfolk og soldater i allieret tjeneste, 1939-45, http://allieret.natmus.dk/person.aspx?84759 (accessed on 27 December 2020).

[6] GRO: Copy of Marriage Certificate.

[7] Ancestry: Canada, Voters Lists, 1935-1980.