Air Transport Auxiliary – Canadians!

The Air Transport Auxiliary: “Anything to Anywhere” 

During my research for “The Secret Keeper” I was very fortunate to connect with some wonderfully generous archivists at the Maidenhead Heritage Centre in England, and their insights and contributions were the reasons I was able to bring Dash’s adventure to life.

The Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) was a civilian organization founded at the outbreak of World War II, tasked with ferrying damaged or repaired or replacement airplanes, as well as mail, soldiers, equipment, whatever and wherever required. “Anything to Anywhere”. Over 1320 men and women joined the ATA from 25 different countries, ferrying 309,000 aircraft. Without the aid of lights, maps, radios, or weapons, they flew over a hundred different kinds of airplanes after training on only a couple, often relying on advice that had been written in a little pilot’s notebooks tucked under the seat in the cockpit.

“The Secret Keeper” focuses on the female pilots, but in fact, only about 10%  (166) were female. In the beginning, the ATA was completely male, despite most of them being older, retired World War I pilots, some of whom had been wounded during that first war. Pilot Stewart Keith-Jopp flew even though he was short one eye and one arm. Anything but hiring women! After all, they declared, the women would be taking jobs from men. They would be doing it so they could appear in glamour magazines. Obviously they couldn’t handle the kinds of planes required. But of course the women proved them wrong! They (and the other pilots) worked twelve days on and two days off, and they could be assigned up to five or six flights in a day. They always flew within sight of the ground, using rivers and smokestacks and fields for navigation. In addition to all the other threats of flying during wartime, ATA pilots flew against strong winds, balloon barrages, mist, search lights, and antiaircraft guns. There were some fighters delivered to France around the time of Dunkirk, but the ATA restricted itself to flying within England after France surrendered to the Germans. In September 1944, a French ATA pilot became the first ATA pilot to land in Europe after D-Day. After that, the ATA was active in Europe and beyond until after the German surrender on May 8, 1945. One bunch of ATA pilots even found their way to Cairo via Malta and north Africa. Only a handful of women ferried fighters to Europe. For a long time, the ATA refused to even consider the possibility.

47 pilots in the Air Transport Auxiliary were Canadian, and 7 of those were women: Helen Harrison, Elspeth Russell, Violet Milstead, Marion Orr, F.M. Horsburgh, K.G. Large, B.A. Lussier

In all, 174 ATA pilots were killed in action. 4 of those were Canadian.

This is a list of ATA_CanadianRecruits provided by Maidenhead Heritage Centre. The Air Transport Auxiliary’s headquarters was at White Waltham airfield near Maidenhead from February 1940 until 30th November 1945. White Waltham is still the spiritual home of ATA, and the Maidenhead Heritage Centre holds the world’s leading collection of ATA memorabilia, including 140 logbooks and thousands of photographs.

Only about a third of the whole organization were pilots. Other than pilots, the ATA included flying instructors, ground school instructors, ground engineers, crash rescue teams, drivers, nurses, doctors, administration staff, and more.

Enjoy this terrific little spotlight on Canadian female ATA pilots, told from the perspective of the women who flew: