from all over the globe who had responded to the call to arms (or if not ‘to arms’, then ‘to fly’, at least), and although our monthly pay cheque was considerably less than our male counterparts for quite some time, I don’t believe any of us really cared. They could have cut our pay entirely and we would still have flown.
My friend Janie had been quite correct when she guessed that we would spend the first few months delivering the Tiger Moth to RAF air stations around the country. I didn’t mind. I loved the Moth. Yes, one winter I had to be lifted bodily out of the cockpit due to having frozen into a solid block flying to Scotland, but at least the aircraft had been delivered – that was the important thing. One moment I might be landing at an air station like RAF Brize Norton and then, quick as a flash, I would be jumping into the taxi Anson, which was a little transport aircraft used to ferry the ATA pilots around, and dashing back to Hamble before jumping in another Moth and heading off somewhere else entirely. It was wonderful to finally have purpose all of my own and not be defined by the rank and status of a husband, or even worse, a house.
Trips to Scotland or the North of England sometimes required an overnight bag and a long, cold train trip back trip to Hampshire the following day, and there had been a (quite significant) degree of chauvinism to deal with initially. The ground engineers would occasionally jibe, ‘where’s the pilot, love’ when looking up to see a woman take off her flying helmet, and then there was the issue of a lack of ladies’ lavatories at many of the air bases to contend with, but we were all just so ecstatic to be flying again. And there was something else that pushed us on too – an absolute determination not to let the side down – of not wanting to ever make a make a mistake and give ammunition to those – and there were many of both sexes – who objected to women being employed as pilots.
But flying for the ATA didn’t come without a significant amount of danger. We flew with no radio and no navigational equipment to guide us to our destination, only a map and a compass. Instruments were fitted in the panel in the cockpit, but we were never taught how to use them which meant flying hundreds of miles across the country, dodging cloud, skimming trees and – unable to get weather updates while airborne – hoping the weather stayed with us. Should we have been taught how to fly on instruments? Yes, I do believe we should, but such training would have taken time and money – the ATA had neither. Which left us to deliver our aircraft navigating by the seat of our pants, using rivers, roads and railway lines to guide us to our destination. We were sitting ducks for the Luftwaffe and for friendly ack-ack units (who occasionally got their aircraft recognition wrong), both of which led to the shaky return of many an ATA pilot who had been taken aback to see a friendly tracer flash past a vulnerable wing. It was only our sense of adventure combined with bloody-minded guile and resilience that got us from A to B and kept us going.
It was amazing!
With a last look at my Ferry Pilot Notes I took a tour of the Spitfire, talking my time, drinking her in, admiring her, sitting as she was with her nose in the air, snootily checking out the competition. But she knew she was in a league of her own and in terms of simple beauty, could never be matched. The men who had gathered to watch our first flights – pilots and ground engineers, mainly– still loitered, but it didn’t bother me, I was used to performing in front of a crowd, part of me even revelled in it. With a quick step onto the wing I climbed in and felt at home immediately. The cockpit was no wider than my shoulders – it was the glass slipper to my Cinderella foot, the feel of a perfectly fitting glove on a delicate hand. Aircraft were not generally designed with women in mind but we all knew that the Spitfire was a much better fit for a woman that a man. I was in a cocooned haven