THE crucial role women played during World War Two at home, in the factories, schools, hospitals and other essential services, is well documented.

Vital though this was, it doesn’t quite tell the full story.

For eight heroic women, based at de Havilland aerodrome, in Hatfield, were to become celebrities of the time as they risked their lives flying unarmed fighter planes across the length of the country.

The female section – as well as the gents – of the Air Transport Auxillary (ATA) had to deal with not only terrible weather conditions, very little mapping and no radio, but also the might of the German Luftwaffe, as they transported various planes to front-line airfields in order to free-up RAF pilots for operations.

Tuesday (July 19) marked 70 years since four of the Hatfield-based female flyers made aviation history when the RAF allowed them to fly fighters, rather than just trainer planes.

With their 15 flights in a Hawker Hurricane, Winnie Crossley, the Hon. Margaret Fairweather, Rosemary Rees, and Joan Hughes truly became part of a man’s world.

Inside 18 months of setting up at Hatfield the women were given the same opportunities as their male colleagues to ferry the very latest combat aircraft, including Spitfires and Mosquitos, from factories to front-line airfields of the RAF.

Within a few years the ATA left Hatfield, but the women, who were renouned for their extraordinary flying talents, became stars and were eventually even cleared to fly the Lancaster and other four-engined bombers.

Sadly many of the team, including the most famous, Amy Johnson, died.

This week on the anniversary of the maiden fighter flight Maidenhead Heritage Centre, in Berkshire, is opening a permanent exhibition and archive, called Grandma Flew Spitfires.

It has been set up to mark the female ATA’s contribution and achievements, and will hold one of the world’s largest collections of ATA memorabilia from uniforms, flying equipment, wartime maps, logbooks, aircraft models to scores of photographs, as well as a simulator Spitfire.

ATA veteran Richard Poad, who is an aviation historian and chairman of the centre, said: “ATA’s [eventual] headquarters were at White Waltham, one minute’s flying by Spitfire from our museum.

“Grandma Flew Spitfires will provide a lasting memorial; what the ATA did will never happen again, if only because the authorities would never permit pilots to fly scores of different planes with so little training.

“So we veterans are delighted to support the project. It will bring our contribution to victory back to life so that our grandchildren, great grandchildren and future generations can learn all about our particular war effort.”

For more information, and a chance to win a flight in a Catalina Flying Boat, click on our link top right.