THE A.T.A. SERVICE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 100, 23 May 1941, Page 3

THE A.T.A. SERVICE

| All the Risks of War, But No Glory

The death of Amy Johnson over the Thames Estuary while on duty for the Air Transport Auxiliary reminded the public that such a service is in being, and awakened curiosity about its activities. Its work is known to few. How it works and who man it is known to fewer still. The story is told by J. Wentworth Day in "London Calling": ITHIN a few days of the Thames Estuary tragedy, one other name was added to the death roll of the A.T.A. Captain Horsey, famous civil air line pilot, lost his life while serving with the A.T.A. He was yet another of that body of pilots of no Service rank or status who, on flying duties of a special kind, have the right to fly anywhere in Britain at any time. They fly Spitfires. Hurricanes, Wellingtons,’ Ansons and the most hush hush aircraft that were ever wheeled on the tarmac. They wear a private uniform of their own or just civilian clothes. They must be seady to fly anything, anywhere, in almost any weather. They are paid, but some of them refuse to take the money. Yet they fly more types of aircraft than many a Service pilot has ever seen. Though they are sometimes in areas thick with the enemy, they carry no arms and fly machines without guns or bombs. In fact, they have all the fun of the war, some of the risks, none of the glory, and nothing to hit back with. But They Can Fly Everyone is a volunteer in the A.T.A. Some are millionaires, and some are farmers. Several are stockbrokers, and one is a professional huntsman. Three of them have only one arm, and one man has one arm and one eye. Most are British, but some are Poles, and others are Americans. But each man, whether he is 50 or 20, can fly. I doubt if anywhere in the world there is a body of men who have flown more different types of aircraft or had more diverse flying experience than these men-and women, An A.T.A. pilot’s job would not be easy for the best all-round pilot in the world. He is almost invariably a man who has been refused for the R.A.F. because of age or disability. His job is to collect new aircraft either from the factory or from the "collecting point" and fly them to whatever units of the Service need them. : The idea of the A.T.A.- was born in the brain of Mr. d’Erlanger, who sought out Captain F. D. Bradbrooke, the wellknown air journalist, and they began to rope in all the pilots of any age who were unfit for R.A.F. service to form an emergency communication body of light aircraft. "Plenty of us about who’d flown in the last war and since, you know; but | when we offered ourselves they said: | ‘Oh, try A.R.P.’" | Within three weeks, Mr. d’Erlanger had forty expert pilots. Phillips Wills,

the sailplane expert, was one. C. S, Napier, the aero-engine designer, was another. So was Wally Handley, the racing motorist. Keith Jopp, who lost an arm and an eye in the last war, also joined. He is the oldest pilot of them all, but he has flown more than 150 Spitfires to date. Since then, A.T.A. has flown over one and a-half million miles and delivered many thousands of machines; it operates

from eight different stations. There are 220 pilots, of whom twenty are excivil air line pilots, seven are Poles and twenty-five are Americans. They have their own sense of humour ‘-a little boyish, sometimes macabre. There was the case of my host flying north at 1,200 feet. He had expected no German lower than 20,000 feet when out of a cloud, a couple of hundred yards away. four Stuka dive bombers flew straight past him. "Passed me on my starboard bow — so close I could see the chaps sitting in ’em. Couldn’t shoot them, as I hadn’t a gun. So I waved. They didn’t wave back. No sense of humour, these Germans."