ATA DUTIES: FERRYING

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 Although the Air Transport Auxiliary was founded with a open mandate to do "whatever it could" with the resources it had (pilots), ferrying was not envisaged at the start. Yet from 1 May 1940 until the summer of 1945, the ATA held a monopoly on this function in Britain. But just what did that actually entail?

 

In the early days, Britain was under attack from the air (part of the Battle of Britain), and aircraft factories were receiving particularly intense attention from the Luftwaffe. In consequence, the ATA was asked to help clear newly produced RAF aircraft away from these prime targets. This task entailed picking up aircraft that had just rolled off the assembly line and were completely untested to the nearest RAF Maintenance Unit, where they were be fitted with such vitally important equipment as radios and armaments. In short, the ATA was flying potentially faulty aircraft without communications or self-defensive capabilities. 

As soon as the modifications were completed, the aircraft had to be taken from the Maintenance Units to the operational squadrons or training units to which they had been assigned. Likewise, aircraft too severely damaged to be repaired at squadron level had to be flown back to the Maintenance units (by the ATA). Aircraft might also be 'ferried' to a port for shipment overseas (to North Africa, Malta, Burma, or Russia), or sent to a Maintenance Unit to be modified for special duties such as photo reconnaissance or SOE operations. The ATA's director, Gerard d'Erlanger liked to say that every friendly aircraft in the skies over Britain had been flown at least once (and more often more than that) by the ATA.

To support the ferrying mission, the ATA developed and operated its own fleet of taxi aircraft in order to bring pilots to and from their deliveries as efficiently as possible.  In the early days, most ATA pilots had to make their way home using ground transportation and often found themselves "caught out" and spending the night in hotels. This was hugely inefficient as those pilots were then missing for duty the next morning. Increasing the taxi fleet proved the far better solution. What started as just one Tiger Moth dedicated to taking pilots where they needed to go grew into a fleet of 218 aircraft. This was composed mostly of Ansons and Fairchilds; the Anson could seat eight and the Fairchild four passengers.

Every morning taxi aircraft set off from each of the twenty-two Ferry Pools to bring pilots to factories, Maintenance Units or squadrons, where they collected their first delivery of the day. Often other aircraft awaited at the destination, which needed to be flown somewhere else. E.g. a pilot would bring a brand-new aircraft to a Maintenance unit, pick up a new aircraft now equipped with radios and armaments and fly it to a squadron that had a broken down aircraft in need of returning to the Maintenance Unit, where another aircraft might be ready and so on and so forth. If, however, a aircraft was delivered, say to a training unit in northern Scotland, where there was no aircraft needing to be moved, then the ATA taxi would collect them if possible. The taxi also brought pilots home to their own pool after their last delivery. 

By the end of the war, the ATA had ferried a total of 309,011 aircraft, and the ATA taxis had travelled a total of 18.25 million miles -- all in the skies over Great Britain! *

* Source: E.C. Cheeseman, Brief Glory: The Story of the Air Transport Auxiliary, Air Transport Auxiliary Association, 1946, 1987, 1995, 2001.

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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