The British Women who Flew in World War Two

 The Second World War was the first in which women played a role in aviation. Russian women flew combat missions as bomber and fighter pilots, but in Great Britain and the United States the role of women pilots was supportive rather than direct. Below is a short description of the important role of British women pilots in WWII.

 

In the U.K. women flew with the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), which was founded almost immediately after the start of WWII by senior executives of British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) to employ pilots not fit for military service in supporting roles for the RAF and Fleet Air Arm (FAA). Although it became the sole ferrying organization of the British armed forces, it responded flexibly to other requests and also provided air ambulance, VIP transport and cargo service on an ad hoc basis.

From the start, the ATA was an organization dedicated to providing services, not proving a point, and it was open to both men and women. Indeed, throughout its existence, men pilots out-numbered women pilots by a significant margin. For example, the first pilots of the organization were 30 men and 8 women. At its peak in 1944, the ATA employed nearly 700 pilots of which only a little over 100 were women. (Source: The Forgotten Pilots. Lettice Curtis (who was herself an ATA pilot). Appendix 1.) Below the founder Gerard d'Erlanger.

The ATA was established by aviation professionals, and initially only accepted pilots with 500 hours of solo time. By the end of 1940, the needs of the organization were so great that the recruiting requirements were reduced to just 50 hours solo, and by 1942 the first candidates without any flying experience were accepted into the organization’s training program. The latter had started in 1941, when the reduction in flying hours required for application had been instituted. Pilots with just 50 hours solo needed additional training to fulfill the tasks assigned.

Rather than duplicating RAF or airline training, however, the ATA inventively developed a pilot training program designed to train pilots precisely for the tasks required by the ATA in a minimum amount of time. Pilots were first trained only on light, training aircraft and then put to work ferrying these aircraft to RAF training establishments. In doing the work, the pilots were already earning their keep, contributing directly to the war effort (relieving RAF pilots from ferrying), and also gaining flying time, experience and confidence.

                           An ATA pilot in a training aircraft. (Photo courtesy of Michael Fahie)

Once they had fully mastered these aircraft, the ATA pilots (whether men or women) advanced to more powerful single-engine aircraft including fighters, and step-by-step at their own pace to twin-engine aircraft and eventually heavy bombers. At no time were ATA pilots trained on aerobatics, air gunnery, formation flying or other military training irrelevant to ferrying and transport service. Indeed, they were given only minimal training on instrument flying, as ATA pilots were expected to fly “visual.” By keeping the topics of training to the minimum, training time was significantly reduced.

Furthermore, by allowing the pilots to progress at their own pace, no pilots were forced beyond their capabilities. There was no need for all pilots to qualify on all classes of aircraft, a policy that ensured all pilots contributed according to their abilities, reducing accidents and losses. Notably this training scheme was evolved and initially managed by some of the world's finest flying instructors -- instructors that had previously been with the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC).

An British woman pilot in cockpit of a Sterling four-engine bomber (Photo courtesy of Maidenhead Heritage Centre)

In the course of the war, the women with the ATA steadily won the same privileges and status as their male counterparts. They wore the same uniforms, underwent the same training at the same centralized flying school, and performed the same duties as their male colleagues as they qualified successively on the classes of aircraft from training bi-planes to four-engine bombers. From 1943 onwards, they broke ground by being awarded equal pay for equal work at a time when other women's auxiliaries (such as the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF)) were not. Last but not least, women in the ATA were promoted on merit and could exercise command authority over male colleagues.

Pauline Gower, the Commander of Women in ATA, whose gentle persistence and diplomatic handling of politicians and generals brought about these successes.

Furthermore, throughout the war, the women in the ATA were recognized and praised both officially and publicly for their contribution to the war effort. Five women and 31 male ATA pilots won the MBE. Four women ATA pilots and two male colleagues earned the BEM. One woman Flight Captain received a Commendation alongside five male ATA officers, and two women ATA pilots along with 16 male ATA pilots received the King’s Commendation for Valuable Service in the Air.

Dr. Helena P. Schader is the author of a comparative study of women pilots in the US and UK published by Pen & Sword, Sisters in Arms: The Women who Flew in WWII.  A former ATA pilot is the leading female protagonist in her series of novels on the Berlin Airlift, Bridge to Tomorrow. Find out more about Book I in the series, Cold Peace, here.

 

 

British Women at War: The Role of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) in WWII

  From the start of the war, British women were encouraged to volunteer for one of the three women's auxiliary military services: Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS) and Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). The oldest, largest and least glamorous, of the three was the ATS.

 

The ATS was officially authorized by Royal Warrant in September 1938 and was intended to bring together under a single structure a variety of voluntary organizations which sought to recruit women volunteers to support the military in time of war. Some of these groups had roots going back to the First World War or even beyond in the case of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY), which had been formed as early as 1908. However, except for the FANY, the various women’s auxiliaries which had sprung up during WWI had been disbanded and so it was necessary to start anew. 

At its inception, the duties envisaged for the ATS were defined as driving, cooking, cleaning (orderlies), clerical work and managing stores. The idea was that women would take over these functions on the home front inside the army so that men would be freed to fight, particularly overseas. Although uniformed from the start and divided into "officers" and "other ranks," it was not until the ATS was recognized as a component part of the military by act of parliament in April 1941 that women officers received commissions and enjoyed an equal status (though not pay!) to men. As a rule, women in the ATS were paid two-thirds of what the men they were replacing had received. They also received just four-fifths of the rations of men. Only with respect to leave was there no discrimination; the women received the same amount as their male counterparts. Women between the ages of 18 and 43 were eligible, and women between 44 and 50 could enlist if they had served in the last war. 

 

Promotion was far less egalitarian. Practically all officers were upper class, many were titled, although they often lacked any other qualification. The right accent and an aura of "authority" were considered the most important requirements -- at least in the early years. 

The poor quality of the leadership probably accounts for the troubles the ATS initially experienced in obtaining adequate uniforms, billets and respect. Rumors of widespread immorality and unmarried pregnancy soon spread. Morale plummeted and by the start of 1941, more women were leaving the ATS than joining. Since it was then still a voluntary organization, this was possible without negative repercussions. It took a parliamentary inquiry to expose the allegations as fraudulent and malicious. Meanwhile, the leadership was rigorously overhauled and a new director installed.

Meanwhile, the women of the ATS were demonstrating their capabilities, and they were taking over an increasing number of jobs. One of the most important of these was manning anti-aircraft batteries. The employment of women on "ack-ack" batteries was proposed and advocated by General Sir Frederick Pile, the CO of the command early in the war. The driving force behind the acceptance of the idea was numbers: Britain's anti-aircraft batteries were short 1,114 officers and nearly 18,000 men at the start of 1940.  General Pile devised a plan to recruit 15,000 women by the end of 1941 -- and he was willing to pay the women at the same rate as men. Indeed, he wanted the women fully integrated into the Royal Artillery with the same ranks, rights, rates of pay and discipline. However, opposition by the ATS leadership prevented the implementation of his proposal. 

Then in May 1941 the Army Act ended the ATS' voluntary status, and the way was opened for the deployment of women in anti-aircraft and searchlight batteries. In March 1942, the conscription of women was legalized and thereafter the ATS was no longer an exclusively a volunteer force and its members became subject to the full weight of military discipline.  Public opinion, nevertheless, still opposed the idea of women "bearing" arms -- or shooting artillery. Instead, the army opted to create mixed anti-aircraft batteries with both ATS and Royal Artillery personnel working together. 

 Although not allowed to fire the guns, the women attached to an anti-aircraft battery  were responsible for operating and maintaining advanced equipment such as predictors, height-finders, plotters, and spotters.  ATS women also manned the searchlight batteries, a role some viewed as the "elite." Searchlights were radar directed and so they worked as plotters as well as operators, the latter had to maintain both the beams (not an easy task) and the generator for the lights, as well as be able to switch it on and off and swing it manually if necessary. ATS attached to anti-aircraft batteries also did driving, manned R/T and teleprinter machines, serviced vehicles, did sentry duty and carried dispatches.

The first mixed gun battery was deployed in August 1941 and the first mixed battery credited with downing an enemy aircraft was in Newcastle in December 1941. The commanding officer of this successful unit went on record saying:

As an old soldier, if I were offered the choice of commanding a mixed battery or a male battery, I would say without hesitation I would take the mixed battery. The girls cannot be beaten in action and, in my opinion, they are better than the men on the instruments they are manning. Beyond a little natural excitement...they are quite as steady if not steadier than the men. They are amazingly keen to go into action....

By the end of 1942, 170,000 women were manning Britain's "ack-ack" guns, which made up 77% of all ATS strength. Meanwhile, the number of other trades in which women were employed had grown from the original five trades to a total of 77 including postal workers, ammunition inspectors, translators and librarians. Furthermore, women were being sent overseas. From just 57 women in the Middle East in August 1941, the number of ATS stationed overseas grew to roughly 14,000 by the end of the war.  At its height, the ATS numbered 210,308 women. Casualties were modest. A total of 67 ATS women, most serving on the ack-ack guns, were killed due to enemy action in the course of the war. 

Although the reputation of the ATS had improved after it's disastrous low at the start of 1941, it never managed to match the prestige of the other women's services and a higher proportion of ATS personnel were conscripts than in either the WAAF or WRNS, the latter of which was all volunteer. Nevertheless, Prime Minister Winston Churchill's daughter Mary joined the ATS in 1941, and in early 1945, Princess Elizabeth also chose to join the ATS, serving as an ambulance and lorry driver. 

Award-winning novelist Helena P. Schrader is the author of three books set in Britain during WWII: Where Eagles Never Flew, Grounded Eagles and Moral Fibre.  You can find out more about them, their awards and read excerpts at: https://CrossSeasPress.com.

 

Surrealist Sisters: Artistic Resistance to Nazi Occupation

by Mark Patton

In an earlier blog-post, I introduced the topic of the German Occupation of the Channel Islands during the Second World War. Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, Sark and Herm were the only parts of the British Isles to fall under Nazi control. Armed resistance of the sort that took place in the occupied territories of France, Belgium, and the Netherlands was really not possible on such small islands, but the residents, both native Channel Islanders and a handful of immigrants, did what they could to undermine the occupying forces and their morale. By the time the Germans arrived in 1940, most men of military age had already joined the British forces, and all but a handful of the islands' Jewish population had taken refuge on the UK mainland.

The artists, Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, were not native islanders but Frenchwomen, and they were also Jewish. Cahun had been born Lucy Schwob; Moore as Suzanne Malherbe; they met as teenagers, became a lesbian couple, and adopted deliberately gender-ambiguous names. Their families, both from Nantes, knew each other well, and, when Cahun's father married Moore's widowed mother, they became, technically, step-sisters.

Claude Cahun, by Marcel Moore, Jersey Heritage Collections
(reproduced under fair usage protocols).

Marcel Moore, by Claude Cahun,
Jersey Heritage Collections
(reproduced under fair usage protocols). 

Before the outbreak of war, Cahun and Moore had lived in Paris, where they collaborated in the creation of art-works that combined photography, poetry and performance. Instinctively attracted to the Surrealist movement, they struggled against the misogyny and homophobia of many of its leading members, but participated in the International Surrealist Exhibition at London's New Burlington Gallery in 1936. They were also actively involved in Contre-Attaque, a group of artists and intellectuals protesting against the rise of Hitler, and the spread of fascism in France.

Flyer for the International Surrealist Exhibition (image is in the Public Domain). Organisers included Henry Moore, Paul Nash, Andre Breton and Man Ray. "Happenings" occurred all across London: Salvador Dali donned a diving suit to give a lecture, almost suffocated, and had to be rescued by the poet, David Gascoyne, who used a spanner to remove the helmet. 

In 1937, Cahun and Moore moved to Jersey, where they had enjoyed family holidays in their youth, buying a property in Saint Brelade's Bay, close to the hotel in which they had previously stayed. As war loomed, they made the brave and surprising decision, despite their Jewish ethnicity and their sexuality, to remain on the island.

Saint Brelade's Bay, Jersey. Photo: Snapshots of the past (licensed under CCA).
This is a pre-war postcard: the Germans later built a concrete tank-proof wall,
and a series of fortifications, along the top of the beach.

Bob Le Sueur, a native islander who taught me at secondary school, and who, as a young man on the island, helped to hide Russian and Spanish slave-workers escaping from the Nazis, said of the two women: "They lived as art ... everyone knew they were Jewish, but nobody turned them in." He described watching from a distance as they walked a cat on a leash along the beach, the creature squealing as the waves swept closer.

In the final year of the war, with the islands cut off from the continent, and both the German garrison and the local population on the brink of starvation, they embarked on a programme of active, but non-violent, resistance: producing leaflets and distributing them to German troops. The leaflets included excerpts from BBC broadcasts, and encouraged troops to mutiny. Karen LeRoy Harris, who curated a recent exhibition of Cahun's work in London, wrote:

"Moore spoke fluent German, a secret kept from the Nazis. The leaflets were written as if by a German officer, and signed 'The soldier without a name.' They distributed the notes themselves, on buses, in soldiers' pockets, in staff-cars ..."

In October, 1944, they were arrested and sentenced to death, but the sentence was never carried out: by this stage it was obvious that Germany was losing the war; and senior officers, fearful of prosecution as war criminals, did not want to be caught with the blood of civilians on their hands. They spent the remaining months of the war in prison, and were liberated by British troops on the 9th of May, 1945. Cahun died in 1954, her health, many believe, broken by her treatment in prison. Moore committed suicide in 1972. They are buried together in Saint Brelade's Churchyard, close to where they lived.

The grave of Lucy Schwob and Suzanne Malherbe at Saint Brelade.
Photo: Man Vyi (image is in the Public Domain).

In the aftermath of the war, Cahun's and Moore's artistic works were largely forgotten. All this changed when, in the early 1990s, a local collector on Jersey showed some of their works to my then colleague, and Curator of Art at the Jersey Museum, Lucy Marder. She organised a major exhibition: "Surrealist Sisters - An Extraordinary Story of Art and Politics;" and the museum went on to acquire a substantial body of their work, which has formed the basis of subsequent exhibitions in the UK, France, and the USA.

The cover of a book by Louise Downie (Lucy Marder's successor as Curator of Art at the Jersey Museum).
Most works by Claude Cahun will remain in copyright until 2024:
a Google search will reveal many of them, but they may not be reproduced.

In 2007, Claude Cahun received this tribute from David Bowie, who exhibited reproductions of some of her works in the United States:

"You could call her transgressive, or you could call her a cross dressing Man Ray with surrealist tendencies. I find this work really quite mad, in the nicest way. Outside of France, and now the UK, she has not had the kind of recognition that, as a founding follower, friend and worker of the original surrealist movement, she surely deserves."

~~~~~~~~~~

Mark Patton blogs regularly on aspects of history and historical fiction at http://mark-patton.blogspot.co.uk. His novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King, and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon. He is currently working on The Cheapside Tales, a London-based trilogy of historical novels.

The Men Are Away at War

by Peter St John

Just over seventy years ago, Hitler's Nazi Germany lunged aggressively out, seeking to set up a "thousand year" rule over the territory and culture of other nations. The momentous world conflict which ensued is mirrored in miniature, in Peter St John's six "Gang" books.

The men in Britain, except for the aged, the unfit, and those with essential civilian occupations, are away at war. The women at home, wait, watch, and work. Poland falls, then France, and the Netherlands too. Hitler's invasion of England waits on the Luftwaffe gaining supremacy in the air. Britain's fate hangs
perilously on the skill and determination of a handful of fatigued fighter pilots, and on the engineering excellence of Spitfires and Hurricanes. London is terror-bombed. The citizens, unsubdued, send their children to the shelter of the countryside and joke about the gang of Nazi thugs. Among the evacuees, an orphan lad arrives in the English village of Widdlington. He, like so many others, possesses nothing, and knows no-one, except for a strict, pious maiden aunt with whom he is to live. He hungers for meaning and a sense of belonging.

This cruel reality provides the background to Peter St John's tales of defiance and challenge, of loss and discovery. There are four gangs of children in Widdlington, each centred on one of the principal streets, and each with its particular set of customs and taboos. A fifth very tough gang, occupies an area on the outskirts of a nearby town. These gangs, not unlike Nazi Storm-troopers, oppose all rivals, defend their territories, and suppress independence. The village school bully, a violent little Hitler, seeks to impose his authority. Can the lonely evacuee escape this oppression? Can he find a way through the perils of the gang territories? Inconveniently for all concerned, he, like proud, indomitable Britain, refuses to
submit to tyranny.

The year is 1940-1941. The siege of island Britain is at its fear-filled height. The Nazi enemy is prowling at the gate. The United States of America has not yet entered the war, except to send supplies and a few volunteers. At this time, just after the marvellously prodigious evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk,
Britain stands alone with deaths, injuries, and destruction. Belts are tight round nervous, taut bellies.

Rationing is in force, and all is scarce. And yet, with faith and unity the people stand together, except that... except that in Widdlington, there is a young evacuee, and a girl, nick-named Jenno.

People have chickens in their backyards and they grow vegetables. Poverty, of course, has always been part of village life, and the children in the "Gang" stories must make do with very little money. As for solidarity among the villagers, it holds but tenuously together under the stressful conditions of war. The
arrival of the evacuee, alas, blows it apart more effectively than ever a German bomb could do.

More strife arises from secrets shared in the gloomy air-raid shelter; or at a fête to raise money to buy a Spitfire aircraft; or again at a contest to gather rose-hips to make syrup for babies; or even from a project to construct a school to train women for farm work. The ramshackle Home Guard has problems defending the village. Lone air-raid wardens patrol at night to catch those who violate the
blackout or who steal precious firewood to eke out a meagre coal ration. Everyone bears in mind the slogan "careless talk costs lives", not least when spies are suspected in Widdlington.

The "Gang" books of Peter St John employ the perplexities and predicaments of the evacuee to explore a small part of what it meant to be involved in the great conflict of 1939-45. The focus is narrowed down to "ordinary" people in every-day life, in an English village at war. It is far from peaceful. There is love and hate, friendship and enmity, loyalty and betrayal. There is poignant tragedy and comic accident.

There are fears, chuckles and tears, as well as moments of doubt, and of confidence. There are times of conflict and times of reconciliation.

The “Gang” books do not provide a history of the Second World War, even less the story of any famous or infamous person. They do, however, tell a tale of real people doing real things, in a real historical situation. The setting is English. The story is fiction based solidly on fact. As to whether it is "English
Historical Fiction", is for the reader to decide.

Author's Amazon Page
Website
Blog