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unusual facts about Air Transport Auxiliary


Elizabeth E. Wein

A followup novel, Rose Under Fire, also set in World War II, tells the story of an Air Transport Auxiliary pilot who is captured and sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp.


Luis Fontés

Fontés later briefly served as an Air Transport Auxiliary ferry pilot during World War II but was killed on 12 October 1940 while delivering a Vickers Wellington Mk1C bomber to an RAF Aircraft Storage Unit at Llandow in South Wales.

Severn Railway Bridge

In 1943 a flight of three Spitfires was being delivered by ATA pilots, including one woman, Ann Wood, from their Castle Bromwich factory to Whitchurch, Bristol.

Walter Runciman, 1st Viscount Runciman of Doxford

Their daughter Margaret Fairweather (married Douglas Fairweather who established the Air Movements Flight in 1942, later joined by Margaret) was the first woman to fly a Spitfire and was one of the original eight female pilots selected by Pauline Gower to join the Air Transport Auxiliary.


see also

Curtiss SO3C Seamew

Lettice Curtis, in her book "Forgotten Pilots", stated 'that although its standard fuel tanks held 300 gallons, it would only just take off with the eighty gallons' fixed as the maximum for Air Transport Auxiliary trips.