First Officer Leta Frost - Telegraph She was appointed MBE for her work on these trials. She also found her husband when, during a visit to the British Rope factory, Charlton, to investigate the supply of suitable rope for the Sproule net, she met its managing director, Dick Frost, MC. They married in the chapel of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, in 1958. Leta Mary Ridley was born on February 26 1923 at Oxton, Birkenhead. Her father ran a small building business, and she was educated at Higher Tranmere High School for Girls, Birkenhead, and Dr Williams" School, Dolgellau. A keen Girl Guide, she volunteered for the WRNS and, while waiting for her age group to be called up, worked at the Liverpool & London Globe insurance company, ran a Brownie pack, and was an ARP messenger. In 1942 she began her training at the WRNS training centre at Westfield College, Finchley, sharing a "cabin" with the future Countess Patricia Mountbatten of Burma. Her wartime service took her to Aberdeen as an administrator, and to the Fleet Air Arm's night fighter school at Drem, near Edinburgh. She also worked as a cipher officer. Post-war she was employed at HMS Dryad, the navigation school at Southwick, Hampshire; Millmeece, Staffordshire, a resettlement training centre; and at HMS Excellent, Portsmouth. She then trained as a safety equipment officer at Gosport and was sent to Eglinton in Northern Ireland, where there was an excellent social life, a good drama group and lots of sailing on Lough Foyle. Forays into the Republic included visits to a tailor at Muff who did not need ration coupons, and, when their new garments were ready, Leta Ridley and her girlfriends would cross the border wearing only underclothes under their Service-issued Burberrys so that they could return wearing their newly-made outfits. For a lunch in 1956 to mark her retirement from the WRNS, Leta Frost was flown from the Royal Naval Air Station at Lossiemouth to Lee-on-Solent in a Vampire jet trainer, and back for tea. Her husband died in 1999, and she is survived by a son and a daughter. First Officer Leta Frost, born February 26 1923, died September 13 2012