Fly & Deliver: A Flight For Joy
By Allan Jones
Joy Lofthouse (nee Gough) was a pilot in the Air Transport Auxiliary in World War II. She died on 15 November 2017, age 94. Here is a sim for you to try of an ATA flight from Southampton to RAF Brize Norton that would have been routine for the pilots in her Ferry Pool at Hamble-le-Rice.
Lofthouse's death received quite wide coverage in the media. She was one of the last female Air Transport Auxiliary pilots still alive in 2017 and was feted extensively in her later years. A natural communicator, she helped to bring alive the ATA experience in a spate of media articles and documentaries. But like others, for many decades after WWII she was part of what another pilot, Lettice Curtiss, called 'The Forgotten Pilots'.
Joy was still a schoolgirl when World War II started. She joined the Air Transport Auxiliary in 1943 to be 'trained ab initio', as she called it. By that stage of the war the ATA was well-organized, with a training school at Haddenham, in Buckinghamshire. The memorabilia site (1) for Haddenham airfield has a sketch of Joy with other pilots drawn by June Gummer (nee Howden), another flyer who came all the way from New Zealand to join the ATA. June died in 2007. Joy's sister, Yvonne McDonald, was an ATA pilot also; she had the surname Wheatley at the time. Yvonne was then a young RAF widow as her 22-year old husband had been killed in a raid over Berlin. Yvonne died in 2014.
In the operational manner of ATA, Joy flew 18 different aircraft during her service; she was rated to fly single engine aircraft and light twins. Each duty day the pilots would turn up and wait to receive 'chits' telling them which aircraft to fly and where to take it. They were restricted to VFR flying only and could be assigned to any aircraft in the classification group they had qualified for, whether they had flown it before on not. They could be sent anywhere in the mainland UK or Northern Ireland.
Like many others, Joy's favorite aircraft was the Spitfire and her unattained goal, which would have required further training and qualification, was to fly a de Havilland Mosquito. But the war ended and the ATA was rapidly disbanded. She became a teacher in civilian life. Seventy years later, she flew once more; she was given a ride in a two-seater Spitfire and had 'hands-on' control for a part of the flight. She said it was almost like being young again.
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