ATA lady pilot Joy Lofthouse and the Spitfire girls

Few would mark Maidenhead as a former crucible of social revolution, but it was here that the first ever British female air corps was formed...

Emily Horton tells the story of the flying girls who helped to win the war in the air and meets former ATA pilot, Joy Lofthouse

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The first ATA pilots at White Waltham (credit: Maidenhead Heritage Centre)

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Maureen Dunlop (credit: Maidenhead Heritage Centre)

The march of history crosses some unlikely terrain. Whatever its other qualities, few would have marked White Waltham down as a crucible of social revolution. Yet it was here, on the outskirts of Maidenhead, that female emancipation took courageous wing, as the first professional, state-sponsored lady aviators roared into view. 

Now, thanks to the ‘Grandma Flew Spitfires’ project at Maidenhead Heritage Centre, the story of the girls (and boys) of the Air Transport Auxiliary, based at White Waltham during WWII, is finally emerging from the clouds. 

Devised in 2011, the project explores how the airfield played a vital role in the war, with ATA pilots ferrying newly-built aircraft from the production line to active service squadrons. Initially,  it was wounded veterans and aged aviators no longer eligible for combat who were encouraged to join the Auxiliary. Women – regarded as lacking the temperament and physique for aerial service – were supposed to keep their feet on the ground.

Enter Pauline Gower. Daughter of a Conservative MP, and an experienced aviatrix, Pauline belonged to a crop of wealthy women who, with the advent of aviation, had joined one of the newly formed flying clubs such as Brooklands in Surrey and the de Havilland School of Flying in Hertfordshire. In 1931 she had established her own joyriding and air taxi service, and in 1938 she was appointed to a prominent role in the Civil Air Guard – a position which left her ideally placed to lobby the authorities for a women’s section of the ATA. She not only got her wish, but was given the task of heading up the section herself. On New Year’s Day 1940, the first eight female pilots duly joined the ATA.

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Joy Lofthouse (credit: John Goodman)

In time, more than 160 women from around the globe would follow this flightpath, 15 of them destined to lose their lives. Most famous among the casualties was Amy Johnson, who in 1930 had become the first woman to fly solo to Australia. She died while transporting a plane in 1941. 

Joy Lofthouse and her late sister, Yvonne MacDonald, signed up in 1943 – the year that Pauline secured equality of pay between the sexes in the ATA, some three decades before equal remuneration became a statutory right. 

“I was interviewed by Pauline – the big white chief – after spotting in Aeroplane magazine that the ATA was looking for new recruits,” explains Joy at her home in Gloucestershire.

“At the time, the emphasis for women was on marriage and children. There was no aspiration for a lifelong career. War made women independent from that. Until then, most of us would never have dreamt of flying planes. I thought that it sounded a whole lot better than my work in a bank, so I immediately signed up and encouraged my sister to do likewise.”

Unlike the first ATA girls, the sisters weren’t from a wealthy background and had not yet learned to fly.

“It was said that the typical recruit was either an It girl or a head girl,” laughs Joy. “I am not sure if I was a head girl, but the original pilots were definitely It girls. They came from very moneyed families, which meant that they had been able to afford flying lessons before the war.”

Joan Hughes, the diminutive figure pictured, was part of this early intake, having learnt to fly aged just 15. It’s the stuff of aviation legend that, when she delivered her aircraft to the bomber boy squadrons, they didn’t believe she was the pilot. 

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Joan Hughes (credit: Maidenhead Heritage Centre)

“Joan was very petite. There’s a famous photo of her beside a Stirling bomber in which she doesn’t even reach the top of the wheel. But for us later recruits, the non-fliers, Pauline was far more selective. We had to be at least 5ft 6”, physically very able and of good academic standard.

“But I felt very lucky. My sister and I were part of a small number of women taught to fly from scratch and our training was very thorough. We learned how to get out of a spin, how to undertake a forced landing and so on. Working with Spitfires was the best – I flew 50 of them. It was the fastest, most powerful thing I’d 

ever experienced. Plus it was so light and compact; incredibly easy to move.”

Despite the exhilaration, however, the pilots couldn’t afford to lose focus.

“Weather was the most dangerous thing,” explains Joy. “You had to avoid the cloud. When Amy Johnson was killed, conditions were such that anyone with lesser experience wouldn’t even have dared to take off. She got caught in cloud and couldn’t descend through it, eventually running out of petrol and ditching in the Thames Estuary.”

Usually, however, obeying the training was enough to bring the pilots safely through.

“Whenever people say that I was brave, I tell them to forget it,” insists Joy. “We were young! We may even have been foolish. But as far as I’m concerned, old age, when your body is letting you down, requires a lot more courage.” 

Perhaps. Yet according to current pilot Squadron Leader Duncan Mason, who has flown Harrier jets on frontline operations and for the Red Arrows aerobatic display team, transporting vital aircraft with just a map and a compass was a hugely pressurised task.

“It took a very special sort of person to be able to handle such a job,” he tells me. “When you meet a former pilot like Joy, you recognise the fighter pilot temperament: grit, determination and the confidence to push through difficult circumstances and get the job done.

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“Those early aircraft, such as the Spitfire, were far more difficult to fly than today’s models, which have so many aids to help you. And if anything went wrong up there, pilots like Joy had only themselves to rely on. They deliberately flew without radio, for fear of interception.

 “The ATA was an arrow in the quiver that won the war. Without those girls and guys ferrying aircraft to frontline units, the RAF couldn’t have kept up with the extraordinary attrition rate. 

“Yet the ladies have an incredible humility about them, which you often see in veterans of that era. They don’t make a big deal out of what they did – but the rest of us should!” 

Indeed. And Maidenhead Heritage Centre is now doing precisely that. 

As for Joy, she is finding that interest in her exploits is undergoing something of a revival.  

“For 60 years nobody asked me about my wartime job, but for the past 10 I’ve been dining out on it,” she whispers with a smile. 

“Those of us who used to fly single-seat Spits would always look down on twin-seaters. Anyone could fly in one of those, we thought – as a passenger, after all, you didn’t have to know how to operate it.  

“Now though, I’ve come to think that they’re a good thing, because they enable so many more people to share the thrill of flying in a Spit. I can absolutely understand why Spitfire buffs spend so much money on a ride in one. Good for them, I say.”

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Joan Hughes graces the front cover of the Windsor, Maidenhead, and Ascot Magazine, April 2016

If you would like to learn more about the Maidenhead Heritage Centre you can go to its website here

If you would like to hear the story of another British aviation icon then you can click here to read Emily Horton's tribute to Captain Eric 'Winkle' Brown, Britain's most decorated pilot