June “Judy” Constance Howden (W8560; W2084), later June Gummer, was born in Pukekohe on 2 July 1918. She gained her pilot’s licence as a teenager after winning a New Zealand Herald flying scholarship while at Waikato Diocesan School for Girls. Her classmates called her “Aeroplane Howden”.

She enlisted in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in 1941 and was posted to No. 2 Elementary Flying Training School at Woodbourne as an Airwoman of the Watch. In October 1943 she travelled to England and joined the Air Transport Auxiliary, ferrying new, repaired and operational aircraft between factories and Royal Air Force stations across Britain.

June flew 22 different types of aircraft and delivered hundreds of planes, most notably Spitfires. Although her role was non-combatant, it carried real risk, particularly in poor weather. She returned to New Zealand in January 1946.

In 1954 she married Robert William Gummer (NZ425251), a Royal New Zealand Air Force pilot who had flown in the Pacific during the war. He later became a pioneer of aerial topdressing in the King Country, helping test the prototype Fletcher aircraft that would transform New Zealand farming. June continued flying in civilian life and, with Robert, farmed near Te Kuiti, where they raised a son and twin daughters, before retiring to Tutukaka.

June Gummer died on 22 May 2007, aged 88, and is remembered as one of New Zealand’s pioneering wartime women aviators (Profile written for “A Flight to Remember”, an Anzac Day 2026 initiative by Online Cenotaph and Air New Zealand). AWMM