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Elizabeth Watkins (born 1923) is an English author, brought up in Kenya, where here parents had started a coffee farm outside Nairobi, and later educated at St Anne's College, Oxford.

In 1941, aged just 18, she falsified her age in order to join up with the Women's Auxiliary Air Force as a cypher officer. Serving in Cairo at the height of the Eighth Army's she worked at the Heliopolis signals base and other secret locations translating top secret signals for the British High Command, including relaying intercepted German Ultra traffic, intelligence considered so secret that it was not even shared directly with the other Allies. Later posted to Kenya to be with her dying father, she was then sent to the Seychelles, where she supported the dangerous work of the Catalina crews of the Canadian and allied air forces, flying vital anti-submarine missions to protect the sea routes to India. Subsequently volunteering for further active service she was posted to Caserta to do cyphers for the Allied advance into Southern Italy.

She now lives in Oxfordshire.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Elizabeth Watkins", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0