The Diverse Backgrounds and Characteristics of the Pilots who Flew for the ATA

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 "People who were keen on flying...were almost by definition slightly mad. It is my experience that the nicest people are all slightly mad, so it was pretty well inevitable that the ATA was full of the nicest people." -- Hugh Bergel, ATA Pilot

 

Just who were the men and women who flew with the ATA? The key characteristic defining the ATA flying staff was, in fact, it's diversity. This applied to practically all demographic criteria from sex and age to nationality and race. It also applied to 'hidden' factors such as background, wealth and health. 

Starting with the most obvious, ATA employed both men and women pilots in an age where this was not normal. The Americans kept their women pilots in a separate (but not equal) institution. The Germans did not allow women to fly in any capacity. To my knowledge, the Soviet Union was the only country that allowed women to fly in WWII as fully integrated members of their armed forces. Furthermore, the Soviet Union allowed women to fly in combat roles.

Yet even the Red Air Force could not compete with the ATA with respect to age. The Red Air Force recruited men and women of military age. The ATA in contrast allowed men and women well beyond the age of conscription to join. Thus the ATA had several pilots older than 50, while the youngest women pilots were 22.

The ATA took recruits from 28 different countries. The largest contingent of foreign pilots came from the United States. The first four American men arrived in August 1940, at the hottest phase of the Battle of Britain. By June 1941, Americans accounted for 30% of the ATA's strength.  Altogether, over two hundred American men and 25 American women signed contracts with the ATA at some point during the war, but by the end only twenty remained. A small number of American pilots who signed up for the ATA failed to pass their flight tests, and fourteen American recruits lost their lives while crossing the Atlantic by sea, victims of the vicious U-boat attacks that came close to severing the Atlantic lifeline. Other Americans proved unsuitable for the business of ferrying; having joined the ATA out of a sense of adventure, they found the tedious business of flying from A to B on a small island insufficiently exciting. However, the single most important factor in the shrinking size of the U.S. contribution was the U.S. entry into the war. One hundred and sixty American men returned to the United States after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor hoping to fly in the USAAF.

The second largest component of foreigners in the ATA were from Poland. Although young Polish pilots famously flew (highly successfully!) with the RAF, older and female Polish pilots found a home in the ATA. Many other countries from Occupied Europe were also represented in the ATA, namely: Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Holland, and Norway. Naturally, pilots came from other parts of the British Commonwealth. Thus the ATA had pilots from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, India, Ceylon, Malaya and Mauritius. More surprisingly, pilots from a variety of neutral countries in addition to the Americans flew with the ATA. There were half a dozen pilots from Ireland and pilots from Switzerland, Spain, Siam, Cuba, Chile and Argentina. There was even one 'enemy alien' pilot with the ATA, an Austrian refugee from Hitler's Reich. 

The former occupations of ATA pilots were as varied as their nationality. Naturally, former RAF and airline pilots were well represented, along with flight instructors, other kinds of professional fliers like the record-breaking Amy Johnson and Jim Mollison. Yet many of the 'hobby fliers' initially so pooh-poohed by the RAF had financed their passion for flying by making a living at some other job. In consequence, there were stockbrokers and bankers, artists and journalists, doctors and lawyers, salesmen and farmers, factory owners and innkeepers, antique dealers and racing drivers, among others.

Yet the most striking aspect of ATA's diversity was arguably its tolerance for people with disabilities. Famously, one ATA pilot had only one arm and one eye -- the result of war injuries when flying for the RFC in the First World War. Another ATA pilot was too obese to fly single-seated fighters. Yet perhaps the most striking example of the ATA's attitude toward the handicapped is illustrated by the following example.

An RAF fighter pilot, who had been so severely wounded in the Battle of Britain as to be invalided out, applied to the ATA as an air-gunner, "praying that even though I was considered unfit to pilot any aeroplane I might thus be given the chance to work off some spite on those responsible...." The story continues:

Interviewed by the Office in charge of Defence, a charming ex-major, I diffidently put forward my qualifications. I realise now that in reality he was an angel in disguise, for after examining my papers he looked up. "But wouldn't you rather join us as a pilot?" he said.

For a moment I was speechless with joy, and then my heart sank as I explained the circumstances. He looked at my papers again. "That's all right," he said. "As long as your medical standard is 'A' Licence you are good enough." He whisked me to a private office, where still in a golden dream, I answered some more questions. Someone thrust a flying helmet and goggles at me, and without even waking up I found myself walking towards a Tiger Moth for a flight test. [Anthony Phelps, I Couldn't Care Less, 1944, p 12]

 The ATA was truly an organisation far ahead of its time!

A former ATA woman pilot is one of the leading female protagonists in the Bridge to Tomorrow Trilogy about the Berlin Airlift.  Find out more about the series at: https://helenapschrader.net/bridge-to-tomorrow/

Watch a video teaser here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7rS_Mwy3TU 

                                      

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