Ancient and Tattered Airmen

 

 

There is a photograph on various memorabilia web sites of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) showing a group of four older pilots in World War II; the photo above is at the Poetry In Action-Aviation web site section on the ATA. 

ATA pilots were officially civilians, but being responsible for the delivery of aircraft to operating units they had a close link to the RAF and the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm.  Most of the pilots were ineligible for military service, despite the constant need of the RAF for aircrew.  Some were too old or had disqualifying disabilities, others were female in an era where the terms ‘flight crew’ and ‘combat’ meant ‘male only’.  Some of their flights are described in my ebook In a Moon’s Course.

The two in the centre of the photograph did not survive the war.  Douglas Fairweather, second from the left, was a pilot who regularly flew Anson aircraft, small ‘taxi’ and cargo planes often used to deliver and collect the ferry pilots from their departure and arrival points. 

He was also a pilot who flew medical emergency flights and was noted for his ability to fly in marginal weather conditions, despite the requirement that ATA pilots only flew by visual flight rules.  Their aircraft had none of the instruments needed for night or ‘blind’ flying in cloud.  It was on one of these flights in 1944 heading up to Prestwick to collect a patient when he and a nursing officer, K. M. Kershaw, crashed into the Irish Sea.

The smaller pilot to his right, Jim Kempster, also flew Ansons.   During the later stages of the war in Europe the ATA delivered cargo and collected passengers from Europe.  In June 1945 Kempster was flying near Bingen, Germany and hit wires crossing the Rhine Gorge.  He and his flight engineer were killed.

ATA pilots loved to fly, but they also knew the importance of their role and the need to get aircraft delivered to fighting units.  They took risks and, in bad weather or due to other circumstances of fate, 173 of them died during service.  Douglas Fairweather’s wife, the Honorable Margery Fairweather, was also an experienced ATA pilot, who only four months after her husband’s death crash-landed well enough to save her passengers but not herself.   The cause – a fuel vent blocked with paint.

More about the ATA can be found at the ATA Museum web site.