It is generally thought is bailed out of her plane successfully, but drowned.
Although she was seen alive in the water, a rescue attempt failed and her body
was never recovered. The incident also led to the death of her would-be rescuer,
Lieutenant Commander Walter Fletcher of HMS Hazlemere, who dove into the chilly
winter waters for Johnson.
The searchers did find her flight authorization papers and some gear
bearing her name.
The mysterious circumstance of how she came to be so
far off course and her disappearance under the waves has lead to various
theories. One maintains that she was flying a spy mission and was shot down
by either friendly or enemy fire, while another speculates that she staged
her own death.
But reports from two men associated with the Haslemere
offer two different, but feasible, scenarios. From statements given for
Probate Court proceedings soon after her disappearance, one Haslemere seaman
said Johnson drifted to close to the ship's stern and the heaving seas
brought the ship down on top of her. And more recently, during a BBC
interview, a wartime clerk at the RAF flight office at Sheerness says that
he prepared a report for 5 January 1941 for another of the ship's seaman. In
it the seaman claims that because Johnson was unable to reach the ropes
tossed to her, someone threw the engines in reverse and accidentally drew
her into the propeller.
She was the first member of the British Air Transport Auxiliary to die in
service.
Her commanding officer Pauline Gower, who headed the women's section of
the ATA, defended Johnson's record saying that the aviator would never had
done anything reckless or unwise.
Her death in an Oxford was somewhat ironic, as she had been one of the original
subscribers to the share offer for Airspeed, the plane's manufacturer.
