ATA DUTIES: TESTING AND TRAINING

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 Although it wasperiphery to their main tasks, the ATA also engaged in testing aircraft. 


Testing primarily took place in the context of preparing the all-important Handling and Pilot's Notes. These provided in concise, easily-consulted form all the pertinent specifications of a specific aircraft. They identified the type of engines, air screws, brakes, flaps, gills, and the fuel requirements as well as the number and size of the fuel tanks etc. In addition, they provided recommendations for boost, rpm, mixture, rudder and flap at take-off, climb, cruise, and landing. Information was provided on stalling speeds with flaps up and down and often tips on things to watch for. 

For example: 

  • "Across wind or down wind, the aeroplane is liable to tip on its nose unless every precaution is taken." 
  • "The hydraulic cut-out screechs loudly as pressure builds up, and stops with a loud bang at 800 lbs. Avoid running between 2100 and 2200 rpm."  
  • "If temperatures rise in cruising flight, run flaps out a little."
  • "Warning: Tail wheel lock is under throttle quadrant NOT (as marked) next to the oil cooler controls. Forward to lock." 

All such tips were the result of experience -- some of it intentional, much of it accidental. 

Diana Barnato Walker, one of the women pilots of the ATA, relates the following incident of "test flying."  On 27 June 1944, she was asked to fly an aircraft which had been put down at a disused airfield by a navy pilot who insisted 'something' was wrong with it. A second navy pilot had aborted take-off when sent to pick it up. Now the job was being turned over to the ATA -- and a woman at that. The aircraft in question was one she'd never flown before, a Grumman Avenger, an American torpedo bomber, a very large aircraft weighing 11,000 lbs empty. Diana reports: 

I walked around it... I was very thorough, while keeping the ground crew waiting and anxious. I knew they would be keen to get rid of their 'Jonah' which had defeated other pilot, but which was also cluttering up an otherwise deserted aerodrome...

With great relief to everyone, I agreed to take it... I opened up very slowly, not to mention gently, taking off while watching the speeds and temperatures closely. When I had reached 5,000 feet, I throttled back to cruising revs and boost and flicked the switch over to check the supercharger, whereupon the revs and boost disappeared downwards. So, nearly, did the Avenger and I.

I put on a little more power to keep my altitude, then changed the switch over again, whereupon the rev-counter and boost gauges surged nearly off the clock while the doube-row Wright Cyclone engine roared back at me with distinct disapproval. I tried again with the same results. Something, as the FAA pilots had reported earlier, definitely wasn't right...What was wrong was now obvious -- even to me. The supercharger was linked up the wrong way around. Knowing this, I was able to fly all the way to Worthy Down with the switch in its 'wrong' position (flying time an anxious 1 hour and 15 minutes), but we didn't blow up. On my snag-sheet I wrote: 'Supercharge U/S. Linked up wrong way around.'  [Diana Barnato Walker, Spreading My Wings, Grub Street, 2003, 149-150]

Later, the FAA took the trouble to ring the ATA to commend the pilot for finding the fault with their Avenger that, as Diana put it, 'had mystified the male sex.'  She added: "There you are, you see, the ATA training is much better than the Navy's." [Walker, 150]


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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