Richard Poad, Chairman of the Maidenhead Heritage Centre (on the right above), gave us a fascinating insight into the Air Transport Auxillary service (the ATA). The ATA was established in 1939 to enable qualified pilots who weren’t eligible for military service to contribute to the war effort by performing all the tasks that were essential to keep the RAF flying. These included delivering planes, carrying out surveillance, and moving people, medicines and spare parts around the country.
The Maidenhead Air Transport Auxiliary Museum, part of the Maidenhead Heritage Centre, has the largest collection of ATA artefacts in the world. Richard drew on this wealth of information to regale us with the stories of some of the pilots who came from all over the world to serve. These included:
– Pauline Gower, who flew in a flying circus before the war, and flew over 20,000 people around the UK using a two seater plane.
– Jackie Sourer from South Africa who could fly 83 types of aircraft, from Tiger Moths to Wellington Bombers and ferried 1450 aircraft around the UK.
– Ann Wood who delivered 455 Spitfires and infamously flew a Spitfire under the railway bridge over the River Severn twice.
The museum is lucky to have some of the pilots log books and Richard was able to tell us about what a typical day as an ATA pilot was like for Lettice Curtis. In a single day she delivered 10 planes, Wellington Bombers, Spitfires, Mosquitoes and Tiger Moths, passing through nine different airfields.
We were also lucky to have John Lumsden with us (on the left in the photo above) to tell us about his Aunt, Marion Wilberforce, who served in the ATA. She was quite a gal, she had her own plane from 1927, ended a strike at a factory in Cosford by getting on the table and rallying the workers to get back to work for the war effort, flew until she was 80, bred miniature cattle and even took them to shows in the back seat of her aircraft! Now there’s an image to conjure with.