A WOMAN who kept war planes in the air during the Second World War celebrates her 100th birthday today.

Kitty Creaghan, of Brookfield Care Home in Little Bury, Greater Leys, Oxford, has often told her family one of her proudest memories was helping the Second World War effort.

Born in Sheffield, as one of eight children to Frederick and Lilian Davison, she initially worked in the cookery trade.

She married Michael Creaghan in Sheffield in November 1935.

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During the war, she worked at a factory in the Yorkshire city welding fuel tanks for Wellington bombers.

Mrs Creaghan did not see her husband for more than three years as he was an electrician in the Royal Corps of Signals, and was deployed in Baghdad.

The couple had two children, Christine Boyd and Kate Trafford. Mrs Creaghan now has six grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.

They moved to Botley in 1990 to be closer to their daughters, who lived in Radley and Abingdon respectively. Mrs Creaghan’s husband died in 1993 and she moved to Coxwell Hall Nursing Home in Faringdon in 2003. She now has dementia and has been at Brookfield Care Home for the past six years. Mrs Boyd said: “She was very proud of working in the war. She used to say you couldn’t even have a pinhole in the tanks when she was welding them in case it leaked.

“She said ‘I did my bit for the war effort because I kept those planes in the air’.”

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