European Aviation History

 In mid-1942, the pool of qualified pilots in Britain not eligible for service with the RAF had been depleted. The ATA's demand for pilots, however, was still growing. Recruiting had to become more innovative.   For roughly one year, the ATA filled their ranks with volunteers from other countries -- from the Commonwealth, of course, but also neutral countries such as the U.S. and Switzerland, and from the countries already defeated by Hitler like Holland, France, and Poland. Some of these recruits were women. Most were men. By May 1943, the pilot shortage had again become so acute that the decision was made to start training pilots from scratch and the focus shifted to young women. Candidates for ab initio training were first drawn from the non-flying members of the RAF and WAAF and, of course, from the staff of the ATA itself. The rationale was that ATA and RAF ground staff had already demonstrated an interest in flying and in the case of ATA's own staff already possessed an...

  The Air Transport Auxiliary opened its ranks to women in November of 1939 and hired the first eight women pilots by the end of the year. The women started flying effective 1 January 1940. This post looks at how these early women fliers were recruited.   The ATA was conceived as a means to enable qualified pilots not eligible for service in the RAF to contribute their unique skills (flying) to the war effort. Since the purpose of the organisation was to put qualified pilots to work -- not train people to fly -- recruitment was initially confined to fully trained pilots. The minimum qualifications were a 'A' (private) licence and more than two hundred hours solo flying. Male applicants had to be over the age of 28 (as those younger than that were subject to military service) and could be as old as 50.  This age range included all men who had flown in the First World War. Women could be as young as 22. Due to the small numbers the ATA planned to employ (thirty men and ei...

The women who flew with the ATA were operating in a predominantly male environment. They never made up more than 16% of the ATA, and the ATA was itself a tiny, auxiliary organisation supporting the bloated, wartime military services. The women of the ATA had to deal with male superiors, male colleagues, and with the officers and airmen of the RAF on a daily basis just to do their jobs. The attitudes of all these men had an impact not only the experience of the women fliers, but their ability to succeed. Before delving into the reception that the women pilots received from their colleagues and RAF aircrew, it is important to remember that the male pilots of the ATA also initially encountered scepticism from the RAF. Young RAF pilots were naturally proud of winning their wings and being entrusted with the most technically advanced aircraft in the country. It was deflating to some young men to have a doddering old man with one arm or an eye patch step out of a newly delivered Spitfire ...