Beatrice Shilling

Beatrice "Tilly" Shilling was an aeronautical engineer whose simple yet brilliant invention helped save the Battle of Britain. Early Spitfires and Hurricanes suffered from a critical defect — when pilots dived or executed negative-G manoeuvres, the Merlin engine's carburettor would flood and the engine would cut out, a potentially fatal problem in combat when German fuel-injected engines had no such weakness. Shilling designed a small brass washer (nicknamed "Miss Shilling's Orifice") that restricted fuel flow and solved the problem. She personally drove to RAF airfields on her motorcycle to fit the devices, working around the clock. Liverpool's engineering heritage programme features her as an exemplar of how one person's ingenuity could influence the outcome of a battle.