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Air Transport Auxiliary at War: 80th Anniversary of its Formation
£11.60£14.20 (-18%)
This book looks at the invaluable work carried out by members of the Air Transport Auxiliary during the course of the Second World War. Comprised of both men and women, it was a civilian organisation tasked with the collection and delivery of military aircraft from the factories to the RAF and Royal Navy stations. Men who undertook the role had to be exempt from having to undertake war time military service due to health or age, but other than that there were very few restrictions on who who could join, which accounted for one-legged, one-armed, one-eyed and short sighted pilots being accepted. Initially it was only men who were allowed to carry out this service, but by December 1939, British authorities were persuaded by Pauline Gower (the daughter of Sir Robert Vaughan Gower, a wartime Conservative MP, and an accomplished pilot in her own right), to establish a women’s section of the Air Transport Auxiliary, of which she was put in charge. The first eight women were accepted in to the service, but it would not be until 1943 that its male and female members received the same pay. By the end of the war 147 different types of aircraft had been flown by the men and women of the Air Transport Auxiliary, including Spitfire fighter aircraft and Lancaster bombers. These brave pilots were not just British, but came from 28 Commonwealth and neutral countries and their efforts sometimes came at a price: 174 Air Transport Auxiliary pilots, both men and women, died during the war whilst flying for the service.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Pen & Sword Aviation (4 Feb. 2021) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Paperback | 144 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 1526726041 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1526726049 |
| Dimensions | 15.24 x 1.27 x 23.5 cm |
by Victoria
I wanted to like this book because I have an interest in the ATA. So while I perhaps didn’t expect a book of only about 130 pages to be in-depth I expected something…well, a bit more.
It’s a nice starting place and listing all the ATA deaths and most of the locations/circumstances gives scope for people to go on and research those pilots and crew further, but I never really felt it was a book to get into. It just felt a bit weak and wishy washy, hardly scratching the surface.
One of the largest chapters is just quoting newspaper articles which don’t really offer that much and become very repetitive and don’t really go into anything further for those incidents. After a few of those and the odd comment from the author I was thinking: “And?” But it went on into the next article, and left a lot of open-ended questions; a lot related to biographical detail that could easily be found and added.
The three stars is mostly for that chapter on listing all the ATA deaths, because that is an important piece that I have not seen anywhere else and not all in one place. There’s a few tiny things that could have been added to that section that would have improved it, but it’s still a very good reference. The photos section is also very good.
For anyone that wants to know more about Amy Johnson’s ATA death, I’d recommend a previous Pen & Sword title “Missing Believed Killed” by the late respected author Roy Conyers Nesbit; he goes into plenty of detail as to what most likely happened to her. The story from 1999 from the guy claiming to have shot her down is dismissed by most investigators, as aside from other doubts, he was twenty miles away at the time! In all likelihood it was bad weather that contributed to her problems and extremely cold water, which also killed the Naval officer that jumped into the water to try to save her. For others interested in further reading I would recommend Nesbit’s book or the Wildfire website which looks into all possibilities with no tin foil hats needed. 🙂 As with most famous people’s deaths there nearly always has to be some darker myth attached, such is human nature.
I was surprised to see no mention of Mary Ellis(Wilkins) one of the recently well known ATA pilots, especially as she only died a couple of years ago, having been involved with several TV programmes and having her own book with a wealth of information of her experiences.
What I have written above, though, is absolutely no detraction from the incredible work the ATA did in WW2. It’s good they have had any book written about them at all, I just wish it had been a deeper reading experience.
by Bookworm
I’ve always been interested in all flight in both World Wars. The ATA is especially interesting because women were involved in a big way. I have a small collection of war aircraft models and I enjoyed matching what I have to the list of aircraft given towards the end of the book.
This is almost a book of two halves. The first part is about the people who wanted to fly and did fly and how the ATA was created. It gave information on, mostly the women, what they did beforehand and what happened to them when they joined this marvelous section of the war. The newspaper cuttings that were included a long the way were very informative.
The second part was mostly facts and figures and lists. I found this part quite heavy going and my concentration lapsed a bit here.
There was a nice summing up at the end and you can tell the author loved writing the book. Some pictures included at the end didn’t work out too well in the kindle version. The captions for the pictures didn’t match up and I wasn’t sure what I was looking at.
All in all a very good, easy read and I’d recommend it to anyone who’s interested in the ATA without having to trawl through huge, dry tomes, for the personal side of this part of history.
Thank you to Pen & Sword Publishing and NetGalley for an early copy of this book.
by Old Soldier Sahib
The narrative is too disjointed to make this a comfortable read. Most paragraphs consist of two or three sentences – if you’re lucky – and this makes for an unsettling experience. There is little logic to the ordering of the chapters and the impression is that the output is rather more of a notebook than a carefully thought out evaluation of the Air Transport Auxiliary. If ever there was a book in need of an editor, this was it, and it’s a shame because the ATA deserved better.
I hope that my copy of this book, since donated to a charity shop, will find a more receptive audience than it found with me.
by Mr D Willox
I bought this book as it looked a great introduction to the ATA. It was not quite what I hoped for. While the author clearly cares on his subject and the people involved, the book is quite dry. It covers the founding individuals, women’s roles and lists those who died well but it has few anecdotes of what it was like to fly in the ATA from someone who was there, or their views on the different aircraft etc. Was hoping for a lot more personal history. The newspaper clips chapter only give brief clips of stories.
by ROCA
This book seems to just repeat previous books about the women pilots and not mention the many men
pilots who also flew with ATA.