Quite unwittingly Maureen Dunlop became the poster girl of the ATA when she was photographed running a hand through her hair as she stood, parachute thrown over her shoulder, in front of a combat plane, almost certainly one she had just delivered to an airfield under siege by the Luftwaffe. As someone who, by all accounts, preferred the company of animals to people she would have found her celebrity status unwelcome, and slightly absurd. Preposterous even. 

 

I have always preferred the picture of Maureen asleep in the corner of a mess room, her legs drawn up under her in a feline posture, no doubt exhausted after a long day ferrying aircraft from one location to another. Or at the controls of a single engine aircraft running through a pre-flight check, quietly determined just to get on with the job.

 

Poster girl? Most certainly. But a poster which showed that women could fly just as well as men, and often under very difficult and demanding circumstances. As the RAF motto says: Per ardua ad astra: Through adversity to the stars.    

 

"Alright then, up you go. That was as much of an introduction to her ferry planes as she ever got. A nod towards the waiting aircraft, a type she may never have seen before. She never once refused to go up, no matter how daunting the challenge, or how unfamiliar the instruments were. Or no matter how much the controls fought against her. How am I ever going to fly that? she would often asked herself as she walked towards the motionless  aircraft, especially the bombers with their towering wings beneath which she often felt she might disappear, swallowed by the giant shadows they cast.  But none of the planes ever let her down and neither did her courage. Even when she struggled to find her bearings in the air, dead reckoning her way to where the plane had to be delivered, map reading on the fly. Barn storming over the slumbering English countryside, which had yet to rouse itself to the full hue and cry of war."

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"The Painted Sky" from the short story collection of the same title. 

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