Author: Richard Poad

On St Patrick’s Day we salute all the Irish men and women who served with ATA in a multitude of capacities. There were 8 men and 1 woman from the Irish Republic as pilots, together with further pilots and a couple of flight engineers who were born in northern Ireland. Then lots of riggers, fitters, and other occupations as well. The boss of the Belfast Ferry Pool throughout its existence was Paddy Armstrong, in peacetime a pilot on Railway Air Services between Liverpool and Belfast. Other pilots included 53-yr old Leslie Warren and ‘Kipper’ Graham, a retired sea captain – we hope there was nothing in his pipe!

Belfast served the Shorts factory and their bread and butter was the Stirling bomber. Sunderland flying boats were also involved and to help with mooring duties ATA employed a small number of Sea Cadets. We bet they had fun. We heard an amazing story about Paddy Armstrong recently. When the Belfast Pool was being closed down, all the office furniture, files, etc were piled in the back of an Anson to go to Aston Down. In the copilot seat was Jill Farquaharson, who was in charge of MT at Belfast. As soon as they were airborne Paddy gave control of the aircraft of Jill and promptly went to sleep. Too much Guinness for lunch?!

Annette Mahon was born in Dublin and was one of the WAAFs recruited by ATA in 1944; the story of these WAAFs recruited is well told in the book “WAAFs with Wings” by Peggy Lucas. Annette served from May 1944 until the end of September 1945. After her training Annette was posted to No 4 Ferry Pool at Prestwick, where she was known as the Barracuda Queen. In the documentary film Spitfire Sisters she tells a wonderful story of flying over the heather covered hills of southern Scotland and suddenly thinking that the scent from the heather was very strong. When she looked down into the cockpit well she saw that her feet were soaked in hydraulic fluid! She used to say that she loved every minute in ATA and would do it all again, if she had to. Annette married Dr Hill who was on ATA’s medical staff.

On St Patrick’s Day in 1942, the American Stuart Updike (based at White Waltham) recorded in his diary “three deliveries today, Mohawk, Hurricane & Spit – a really good day, visibility good and ceiling about 2000ft – had tea at Shawbury – very good too!” But… the British weather changes all the time and the very next day he wrote “Flew an Anson through some stinking weather today, did not enjoy it one bit either. Lunch at Sherburn (No 7 Ferry Pool in Yorkshire) with Coe and Eddie”.

  Photo by Robert Wadsworth

We are very sad to report that Eleanor Wadsworth, one of the last surviving pilots of Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), died shortly before Christmas 2020 at the age of 103.  She served with ATA from June 1943 to the end of September 1945.

Eleanor spoke about her time in ATA in an interview for Maidenhead Heritage Centre filmed in 2011.   She was born in Nottingham and joined ATA as an architect in the Works Department at ATA’s White Waltham HQ, “designing parachute packing rooms, male and female toilets and rest rooms for pilots”.  When the department ran out of work she was one of the first 6 non-flying staff to be offered the chance to learn to fly.  She said “I always liked a new challenge” and so she went to ATA’s Initial Flying School at Thame and Barton-in-the-Clay.  After ground school, Tiger Moths and Magisters were used for her basic training with Dennis Lead as her instructor.  After being checked out by ‘Timber’ Woods (“a nice old boy”), lots of cross country practice was required before being allocated air taxi work in the Fairchild Argus.  Then back to school for high speed training on the Harvard and thus to the Hurricane, Spitfire, Hellcat, Mustang and others.  In all she flew 22 different types, with a total of 215 hours flying on 19 different single types and 86 hours on twin engine aircraft (Anson, Oxford and Dominie).

She never attempted any aerobatics (strictly forbidden), being happy to fly straight and level and “sit back and enjoy it”.  She loved the Spitfire, which she described as “remarkably subtle to fly” – although the check points went past very quickly.  Luckily she loved maps!  One aircraft she disliked was the Fairey Barracuda, a “remarkably ungainly contrivance”. Its bi-plane predecessor the Swordfish was “OK if you weren’t in a hurry”, but when she was allowed to take controls of a Liberator in which she was a passenger, it was “a heavy-handed kind of aircraft, a bit like driving a bus”.

Eleanor’s most worrying experience was when flying a Fairchild air taxi fully laden with 3 passengers, including Flight Captain Joan Hughes.  Immediately after take-off a piston came through the engine cowling, requiring a smart turn to the left in order to land successfully on a cross runway.

Eleanor was based for short periods at Sherburn-in-Elmet and Cosford, before settling at No. 6 Ferry Pool at Ratcliffe, where she found the Americans based there “very refreshing” and shared her family’s caravan with her friend Mary Wilson.  Most importantly she met her future husband Bernard Wadsworth, who was a Flight Engineer with ATA.   She and her fellow ATA pilots will for ever remain an inspiration to women everywhere.  Rest in peace, Eleanor.

“She has slipped the surly bonds of earth”            

September 15th is Battle of Britain Day. Though ATA was a civilian organisation, sometimes its pilots found themselves in the thick of the battle. This entry for 4 September 1940 is from the diary of Flt Capt J A V Watson; it’s quite a story. If you scroll down to the entry for 20 July you’ll find records of other ATA pilots delivering aircraft during the Battle of Britain.

The battle of Britain at its height. I landed a fully armed Hurricane at N. Weald in Essex (from Aston Down) 10 minutes after the Hun dropped 500 bombs there.  The airman who waved me in was wearing all he’d got left – Tin helmet, pyjamas & sea boots. He looked very amazed when I said “This war’s getting quite brisk isn’t it?” I didn’t realise that the blitz had just happened. He had a bullet through the front of his tin hat which had torn the seat of his trousers! The hangars were burning, all the buildings were partly demolished, & bomb splinters were all over the aerodrome – still hot so I picked a few up. I had difficulty selecting a landing path between the craters. But remarkably few aeroplanes were damaged.

Later a Hurricane caught fire in the air & landed wheels up in flames. Neither the ambulance nor the fire tender could go out to it. The ambulance was on its side & the fire tenders tires were all burst by blast. The pilot escaped but there were some thousands of machine gun bullets in the fire & these were going off for two hours afterwards, so no one could go near. Delayed action bombs also blew up at intervals so my taxi could not come to collect me. The operations room arranged a lift for me to Hatfield in a Blenheim. The Sergt. pilot landed at Radlett in error, and asked me up in front to navigate him to Hatfield! Visibility about 20 miles. Amy Johnson gave me a lift home from there in her Anson.  Thus I hitch hiked my way home after an exciting day – but the damage at North Weald was depressing, but thank God, the casualties were remarkably few.

80 years ago on July 10^th 1940 the Battle of Britain began. ATA was still a young organization with around 100 pilots.  What better reason to trawl through the handful of logbooks (among the 140+ in our collection) which were kept by ATA pilots serving at the time of the Battle of Britain.  We have managed to find these entries which we hope will interest you. You can find all these logbooks in the online archive on this website https://archive.atamuseum.org/logbooks.php

Philip Wills (later Director of Operations)

17 August               Hurricane                St Athan – Tangmere

19 August               Spitfire                    Kirkbride – Middle Wallop

Jimmy Nettleton

28 August               Spitfire                    Hamble – Westhampnett (now Goodwood)

Stanley Brown (seconded from BOAC)

3 September           Hurricane                White Waltham – Kenley

10 September         Spitfire                    Brize Norton – Middle Wallop

27 September         Spitfire                    Little Rissington – Warmwell (satellite of MW)

30 September         Hurricane                Aston Down – Middle Wallop

15 October             Hurricane                Wroughton – Shoreham

Arnold Watson

4 September           Hurricane                Aston Down – North Weald (Essex)

Josep Carreras (the only Spanish pilot in ATA, the first ATA pilot to fly a Liberator bomber and an instructor on Catalina flying boats)

10 September         Spitfire                    Brize Norton – Middle Wallop

Peter Mursell (later Director of Training)

23 September         Spitfire                    ??? – Tangmere

29 October             Spitfire                    West Malling – Gravesend

The ‘official’ end of the Battle of Britain was 31 October 1940.

The only aircraft I actively disliked….

So wrote ATA pilot Mary Wilkins (later Ellis).  She went on “It flapped about all over the sky. On land it was like a penguin but apparently it was good on the sea. It had a mind of its own.“

The Walrus amphibian, designed by Supermarine, first flew in 1933 and remained in production to 1944.  It is remembered as an air-sea rescue aircraft and for being the least favourite plane of ATA pilots, who ferried it 1482 times.  Many were built by Saunders Roe at East Cowes IOW and flown out of Somerton airfield, the size of a postage stamp, which made take-off ‘difficult’.  It had a ‘pusher’ airscrew, a maximum range of 600 miles and a cruising speed of 95mph.

Lettice Curtis wrote that there was no other aircraft like it.  On the ground it waddled along like a duck. Once it was airborne, it climbed away swinging gently fore and aft in a pendulous motion.  Diana Barnato Walker said it got airborne when it felt like it, then wallowed along and flew more like a boat than an aircraft.  It had an undercarriage warning horn which sounded every time the selector lever was moved to remind the pilot to check it was in the correct position for a land or a water arrival.

The Museum knows of only 3  accidents involving a Walrus.  Anne Walker (later Duncan) took off from Somerton airfield at Cowes in a crosswind, a hazardous performance with all that double wing.  She swung, finishing up at the end of the take-off run in a haystack.  She was knocked out and the whole caboosh went up in flames.  Luckily a baker’s boy was cycling along the lane beside the aerodrome boundary.  He pulled Anne out of the conflagration, then rescued his bike plus some of the singed stuff. (Mary Ellis – A Spitfire Girl’)

Philippa Bennett (based at Hamble) ferried the Walrus 41 times between July 1942 and November 1945 (her logbooks can be viewed on this website https://archive.atamuseum.org/logbooks.php). She once forgot to pump the wheels down. She made a really beautiful gentle landing – but on the two underwing floats. The aircraft was undamaged!  A male pilot from another ferry pool was over the tree-lined Severn gorge near Ironbridge when he had a complete engine failure. Rather than crash into the tops of trees, he landed on the water, threw out an anchor and waded ashore.  The accident report commended the pilot and stated ‘the aircraft was slightly damaged when the tide receded’. (In Shropshire? – Ed.)

ATA pilots were forbidden from landing on water.  However Capt. Arnold Watson’s diary (available to read on this website) has this entry for 10 November 1942.  Read what ATA’s expert thought!

I’d not flown a Walrus amphibian before. I found it rather more tricky than the Grumman Goose since it is more top heavy & the rudder is abnormally sensitive on land power on. Admittedly we were completely cross wind on the runway, which made it worse.

On the Solent, waves about two feet high light wind, we made four landings & take-offs. The landing was easier under these good conditions than on land. Even power off at 65 knots approach – as for a force landing. The angle of descent is not steep, since there are no flaps, no undercart & no constant speed airscrews. The hold off is normal & the touch-down must be in a level attitude – or only slightly nose up – not 3 pointer. After touching, the stick must be held firmly back. The water drag produces rapid deceleration.

The take-off on water requires a special technique & more run to get up speed than on land. To start ailerons are put hard over to the right, the elevator is given a steady backward pressure all the time she is accelerating.

At about 100 feet, the engine was cut on take-off, & a landing straight ahead was made with no great difficulty on water. My instructor was pleased by this, & the fact that I had quickly got used to operation on water, & was prepared to send me solo.

The last time I flew a “pusher” was the Douglas Engine (17 h.p.) Kronfeld Drone at Brooklands about 1934 or 1935!