ATA CHALLENGES: ENEMY ACTION

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 It is easy to forget that all of Britain was effectively a "war zone" until the end of WWII. For the bulk of the war, the Luftwaffe had airfields in occupied France and Norway and could reach any part of the British Isles they wanted. In the last year of war, Britain was also threatened by rockets, the V-2s. This meant that although the ATA was a civilian organisation, it did occasionaly encounter the enemy in the skies of Great Britain. 

The intensity and nature of enemy air activity over the British Isles varied over time, but for the ATA, flying in unarmed aircraft without radios, the risks were always high. Like the rest of the British population, they and their airfields were vulnerable to bombing and strafing while on the ground. In addition, they were subject to attack while flying in British airspace. 

Germany's first and most intensive bombing offensive starting in late 1940 and continuing to mid-1941 took over 50,000 lives and hundreds of thousands were made homeless. The ATA was in the thick of it, flying to aircraft factories and RAF installations, both of which were high-priority targets for the Luftwaffe. Some of the ferry Pools likewise received 'special attention' from the enemy. The airfield at Hamble, between Southampton and Portsmouth, was a 'front-line' ferry pool that received repeated visits from the Luftwaffe including strafing raid that caused casualties among the staff. The ATA airfield at Hatfield was bombed by a Ju88 at low altitude in October 1940. 

ATA pilot Lettice Curtis describes the incident:

As so often happened, the air raid warning and the bombs came at the same instant and one bomb fell very near indeed to those running from the office to the shelters. Luckily for them it did not explode on impact, otherwise we would almost certainly have lost, amongst others, Pauline Gower, our Commanding Officer, who was nearest the bomb at the time.

One of bombs, however, did land on a factory workshop and twenty-one people were killed and some seventy injured. The bombs had been dropped from around 100 ft and the pilot had machine-gunned workers running to the shelters.

In the summer of 1941, the Ferry Pool at White Waltham was bombed and a Hurricane was destroyed on the ground while a hangar took a direct hit. The Ferry Pool at Kirkbride was the victim of a particularly clever attack as described by the American ATA pilot J. Genovese:

The German was flying a Messerschmitt 110... and from a distance it looked exactly like a British Hampden... Then, when the plane got close, it lowered its landing gear, wiggled it wings a couple of time, just like the ferry pilots and RAF boys always did to signal they were going to land. Jerry got in just close enough to make a bad target for the AA gun when suddenly he gave his plane full throttle, retracted hi gear, and roared down across the field at about 100 ft, machine guns and nose cannon blasting. At the centre of the field he dropped one bomb, then he cut straight at the hangar and threw two more right through the roof. To put the finishing touch on his maneuver, he kept his plane just above the treetops, at an impossible level for the embarrassed gunnery officer to get another bead on him until he was out of range. [J. Genovese, We Flew Without Guns, John C. Winston Co, 1945, p. 77-78] (Below Me110 over Britain)

But if the ATA took higher risks than the average citizen, they also had the satisfaction of being particularly well protected. Ferry Pools were often located adjacent to RAF aerodromes, and they enjoyed the protection the RAF gave their own. Genovese recalls the following incident:

 ...before the sound of the explosions had died away, there was a multiple roar at the far end of the field and two Spitfires shot out of a beautifully camouflaged nowhere, raced one behind the other down the field, and took off after the raider. [Genovese, p 55]

Even after Luftwaffe had been pushed out of France and the risk of bombing within England had been minimised, the ATA was still at risk because it was advancing just between the RAF. On New Year's Day  1945, no fewer than four ATA taxi Ansons were destroyed on the ground in a surprise air attack that opened the Ardennes Offensive.

While the risk of being bombed was something shared with the entire population, the risk of being shot down while flying was unique to the RAF, FAA and ATA. During the height of the German air offensive in '40-'41, the ATA mounted guns on their taxis and hired air gunners to man them. Yet, for the most part the ATA was unscathed, with no casualties or injuries due to enemy action in the air. But there were some close calls. 

Diana Barnato Walker recalls:

Passing over the railway yards [near Reading], ... from the mass of cloud in front of us, out popped and aircraft... I saw tracer coming out at us... I then noticed the huge black dross on the fuselage and swastika on the tailplane. An Me110!

Jim saw it too. 'Jeese!' he yelled, 'it's a Jerry!' He yanked the Anson up into the overcast to hide as the German flashed past, very close, on our port side, its guns still blazing.

 Mary de Bunsen describes an even more dangerous encounter while flying in a small Fairchild taxi:

One day four of us took off in a Fairchild four-seater during an alert, and guns opened up as we turned on course. We could see shell-splinters splashing in the mud and were rather frightened, so we came down low and skedaddled up the Hamble River at nought feet.

The ATA did not always get away unscathed, however. E.C. Cheeseman reports:

...a pilot saw two Spitfires attack four German plans. Judging the odds to be about right, he thought he'd stay around to watch. Unfortunately, he never noticed the fifth Jerry just below his tail and before he knew what had happened he got a burst of  machine gun in his engine. [E.C. Cheesman, Brief Glory: The Story of the Air Transport Auxiliary, Air Transport Auxiliary Association, 1946, p. 113]

Perhaps the most dramatic description of encounters with the enemy in the air, however, comes from Genovese. He writes about ferrying a Hampden bomber in late 1941 as follows:

I was just levelled out when I heard the crack of bullets and felt a jarring succession of holes ripped into the tip of my right wing. I couldn't believe it at first...[it was] a Me110. ... The German had at least four machine guns and cannon. ... I tried to outclimb it, but I couldn't, and being out in front, every  move I made either to the side or upwards gave him a better target....So I dived. 

Probably the dive in itself surprised the German, since it was executed at so dangerous an altitude [700 feet], and as I leveled out at about one hundred feet I cut the throttle and let down my landing flaps. From a speed of 240 mile per hour I pulled the Hampden down to around a hundred, and the German, even though he dived just a split second after I did, overshot badly... and [before he could attack again] I was able to get about four hundred feet. ... [but] he regained some seven or eight hundred feet, and I felt like a clay pigeon sitting there waiting for his slugs....

A few miles away to the west of Abbotscinch there was a secret RAF base, and the only thing I could think of was hedgehopping on a beeline toward that base... Through his rather poor marksmanship and my own willingness to risk a stall and nose dive rather than a burst of his guns, I managed to lead him directly over the RAF base -- and I don't believe it was more than a matter of seconds before a pair of Spitfires were in the air chasing that German over the Channel. 

Last  but not least, during the latter stages of the war when the ATA was delivering aircraft and freight to the Continent, the pilots did run the real risk of going off course or getting lost and being shot at by German flak. At least one ATA aircraft was so badly damaged by enemy ground fire that it had to make an emergency landing -- fortunately on the Allies side of the lines. One Polish pilot, flying against regulations above the cloud, managed to get so lost he actually flew over German airspace before making a forced landing in France. 

In short, flying in a war zone was very much a part of 'daily life' in the ATA.

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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