Some Lucky Day
Authors: Ellie Dean
Contents
May 1942. Kitty Pargeter loves the life she’s leading as a talented young pilot, serving her country.
But tragedy strikes when she is forced to crash-land and is badly injured.
She is taken to a specialist hospital in Cliffehaven, where she must come to terms with the disabling injury that threatens her career. Then comes the shattering news that her beloved brother has been shot down and presumed dead. And she wonders if she’ll able to find the courage and fortitude to carry on.
As Kitty slowly recovers – with the help of Peggy Reilly and her family at Beach View boarding house – she is more determined than ever to return to the job she loves, whatever it takes.
Some Lucky Day
is Ellie Dean’s seventh novel. She lives in a tiny hamlet set deep in the heart of the South Downs in Sussex, which has been her home for many years and where she raised her three children. To find out more visit
www.ellie-dean.co.uk
There’ll be Blue Skies
Far From Home
Keep Smiling Through
Where the Heart Lies
Always in My Heart
All My Tomorrows
Ellie Dean
There were 166 women pilots in the ATA (Air Transport Auxiliary). This book is dedicated to all of them, but especially to the fifteen who gave their lives in the service of this country. They were extraordinary women who rose to the challenges of an extraordinary time and proved they were more than worthy of being called heroes.
During my research into the background history of the ATA (Air Transport Auxiliary), I was delighted to discover the Maidenhead Heritage Centre which proved to be a treasure trove of uniforms, log books, charts, diaries, letters and photographs. I spent a lovely day delving through all these delights, and probably could have stayed a whole week without getting even mid-way through this lovingly amassed collection.
But the really fun experience was climbing into the Spitfire simulator and charting a flight from Maidenhead to Hastings, and then executing two victory rolls and looping the loop before following the coastline and landing safely – if a bit erratically – on the grassy runway of Shoreham airfield. I now have a certificate to say that this Granny flew a Spitfire!
My thanks go to Ian Runnalls who was my flight instructor, and to David Horton who shared some of his vast knowledge of the ATA with me and never tired of answering my questions. Thank you too to Richard who was manning the reception desk, and to my husband Ollie, who drove me there through the teeming rain without getting lost. My research could not have been completed without the help of these unpaid volunteers – although I did buy Ollie some lunch in the lovely little café in Maidenhead library.
I also want to thank Jean Relf for entrusting me with the precious letters, aerographs and diaries that her father, Pte Ken Fowler, wrote during his time in REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) when he was posted to the Far East. They have provided me with a great sense of the time and the attitudes of the people during the war, and have been an enormous help.
Churchill realised that only a vast superiority in the air could win the war. To this end, he sent a note to Sir Charles Craven, Secretary of State for Air, under the command, ‘Action this day’, demanding the creation of an Air Force twice the strength of the Germans’ Luftwaffe.
Following this order, a gigantic chain of production was set in motion. The initial cost of producing this enormous number of aircraft was met by the Lend Lease loans signed by President Roosevelt, and this continued until the attack on Pearl Harbor rendered the question of payment secondary and brought an end to America’s neutrality. Combat pilots were now queuing up to join the RAF, but there was a severe shortage of ferry pilots to deliver planes and men to where they were needed.
Gerard ‘Pop’ d’Erlanger was a merchant banker, private pilot and director of BOAC (now British Airways), who had been concerned at the start of hostilities with Germany that this shortage would happen if flyers like himself could not be used. Having informed Balfour of his concerns back in May 1938, he’d suggested forming a reservist Air Force, made up of holders of private licences with at least two hundred and fifty hours in the air, but who were ineligible to join the RAF. He envisaged that this civilian Air Transport Auxiliary unit would be an aerial courier service for VIPs, medicines and the wounded, and thereby release the combat pilots to continue their defence of the country. It soon became clear that the ferrying of aircraft between factories, maintenance units and front-line squadrons was to be the unit’s main task.
Permission was given and a thousand private licence holders were contacted. One hundred replied and in September 1939, thirty were selected to join the elite ATA unit after interviews and flight tests held at the British Airways wartime base at Whitchurch outside Bristol. This first intake jokingly called themselves the ‘Ancient and Tattered Airmen’, for they were made up of oddballs, intellectuals, artists, bank managers, civil servants, wounded veterans – some with missing limbs or poor eyesight – publicans, a motorcycle racing champion and even a retired admiral.
Some other recruits enlisted at the same time provoked consternation in the top brass in the RAF. Numbering eight, and including the famous aviatrix Amy Johnson, a group of women pilots was marshalled by Pauline Gower, the ambitious daughter of Sir Robert Gower MP, and led into the air by the imperious Lettice Curtis against great resistance from the RAF. Having learned to fly before the war made them an elite within an elite, but like the men in the ATA, they were never formally attached to RAF units and were based in their own all-civilian pools and funded by BOAC for the first few war years. As their numbers swelled, their nickname soon became the ‘Always Terrified Airwomen’, but they were to prove they were far more formidable than their ‘Ancient and Tattered’ male counterparts.
The RAF considered women to be temperamentally or physically unworthy of the privilege of flying operational aircraft, and would allow them only to fly the open cockpit de Havilland Moths, and later, Miles Magisters. It took two years of determined canvassing by these women and their supporters before they were permitted to fly fighter planes – and five before they were allowed to fly them to Europe.
These pioneering women pilots came mostly from titled or wealthy families and knew each other, not only through school and high society debutante circles, but from Stag Lane, Heston and Brooklands, which were London’s most famous pre-war flying clubs.
They were a tight-knit, exclusive group, with cut-glass accents and rather autocratic attitudes that later women recruits from America, Poland, Chile, Argentina and Australia were to find daunting. The society editors of the
Daily Sketch
and the
Picture Post
loved these ‘It Girls’ who were doing their bit, but there was nothing superficial about their courage or motivation, for they were possessors of inner steel and a fierce, unspoken patriotism.
During the war, the men and women of the ATA ferried a total of 309,000 aircraft of 147 types, without radios, with no instrument flying instruction, no weapons, and at the mercy of not only barrage balloons, ack-ack fire and enemy attack, but the awful British weather.
In 1943 the women pilots were granted the unprecedented privilege of equal pay with the men of equal rank, but official British government recognition didn’t come until September 2008, when all surviving veterans were awarded a special Veterans Badge in a ceremony at 10 Downing Street.
Cosford ATA Ferry Pool near Wolverhampton May 1942
PILOT OFFICER KITTY
Pargeter was just twenty-one, but at the moment she felt like a small schoolgirl up before her headmistress. The humiliation burned in her face as she stood to attention next to her best friend Charlotte Bingham and withstood the angry tirade from Marion Wilberforce, the Commanding Officer of Cosford Ferry Pool. There was nothing she or Charlotte could possibly say in their defence, for they were guilty as charged. As this was not the first time they’d been carpeted over their high jinks, she knew that a wrong word now could easily bring the wrath of God on both their heads.
Marion Wilberforce eyed them coldly. ‘This is the third time in the last eleven months that you’ve been caught flying dangerously,’ she said in tones that could freeze the ears off a polar bear. ‘You are
not
part of a barnstorming air display team – neither are you here for your own entertainment. The aircraft entrusted to your care is vital to the war effort, and performing barrel rolls and looping the loop is not only putting your aircraft at risk, but is damaging to the unit’s reputation.’
Kitty’s nape tingled from her icy glare, and she hardly dared to breathe as the older woman continued her tirade.
‘It simply isn’t good enough,’ Marion snapped. ‘We had enough difficulty in persuading the RAF top brass to let us fly their fighter planes in the first place. This sort of thing only gives them an excuse to expound on their theory that hare-brained women shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near their precious aircraft. And at this very moment, I have to say that I’m inclined to agree with them.’
Kitty flinched at this. She was very well aware of the Air Force’s misogynist view on female pilots, and was horrified that any woman should ever agree with it. Marion Wilberforce must be very angry indeed to say such a thing, for she had been one of the first eight pioneering women who had set up the women’s unit of the ATA in the face of huge opposition from the RAF.
Kitty had been accepted into the ATA on her nineteenth birthday in the spring of 1940 and had been part of that same struggle to be recognised as capable and worthy of flying RAF fighter planes as well as the smaller trainer and communication planes. The battle to be permitted to fly the four-engine, heavy bombers was still ongoing, and the thought that her brief moments of grandstanding might damage everything they had strived for was shaming. Now she deeply regretted showing off.
If only she could learn to rein in the natural exuberance and competitiveness that always got her into trouble, she might actually save herself – and others – a lot of bother. But it was a failing she’d had since childhood, spurred on by her hero worship of her older brother Freddy and the determination to match – or better him – in everything. It was why she’d learned to fly in the first place.
The silence in the room was heavy, and Kitty could hear the drum of her pulse as those cold eyes settled on her again.
‘Well? What do you have to say for yourselves?’
‘I am sorry,’ Kitty replied, echoing Charlotte’s heartfelt apology. ‘It was my fault entirely, so please don’t blame Charlotte. And I promise I’ve learned my lesson and won’t do it again,’ she added in a rush.
Marion’s lips twisted in disbelief. ‘You seem to have made that promise before, Pargeter, and then you flew a Spitfire under the Severn Bridge. Twice.’
Kitty flushed scarlet and couldn’t meet her gaze.
‘It’s time both of you took things seriously,’ Marion continued sternly. ‘Your boisterous behaviour is unacceptable, Pargeter. And Bingham – you should know better than to follow her lead.’
Both girls remained silent as the CO took a sharp, impatient breath and then clasped her hands together on the open folders in front of her. ‘You, Pargeter, were fortunate enough to be awarded a full scholarship to one of England’s finest girls’ schools, where the bywords are discipline, duty and decorum. I’m sure your parents would be most distressed to hear that those cornerstone lessons have gone unheeded.’
Kitty felt the colour drain from her face. ‘Please don’t write and tell my parents, ma’am,’ she begged. ‘I’m ashamed enough already, and I couldn’t bear it if my behaviour caused them any upset.’