Ann Wood-Kelly
British Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA)
World War II

In 1939, the British Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) was the first organization officially to employ women to fly military aircraft. The eight original women in the British ATA flew small single-engined open cockpit trainers, but as the war progressed, their numbers and their jobs increased.

By 1943, women ATA pilots earned the same salary as male pilots, ferried all classes of aircraft and by 1944, began ferrying airplanes to the continent. Female aviation pioneer, Jacqueline Cochran recruited over two dozen American women pilots for the British ATA—among them Ann Wood-Kelly. The organization became Cochran's model for establishing the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP).

Later, Ann Wood-Kelly became Pan American Airways' first woman staff vice president for international charges and President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed her to the Women's Advisory Committee on Aviation. President Richard Nixon later named her the committee chairperson.

After Wood-Kelly's graduation from college in 1938, her mother had suggested that she learn to fly under the auspices of a new federal aviation program designed to prepare young men to become pilots in the event of war. The program was limited to 12 people, one of whom could be female.

The flying was going to happen [in the summer of 1940] at . . . Bowdoin College (then an all-male institution.). . . .They had collected 10 boys. The eleventh (person) was my brother and I was the twelfth. They didn't know what to do about me . . . [so] they advertised in the Brunswick paper for a boy to come to learn to fly for free and nobody came. So, the [college] president said, 'Well, she'll be down there on the water. Nobody will know she's here. . . .Let's go with it. We want the program.'

After America entered the war in 1941, Wood-Kelly tried to find a job where she could fly. She was unsuccessful until she met female aviation pioneer Jacqueline Cochran. They hit it off and Wood-Kelly was soon on her way to England.

I went to England in a motor ship the S.S. Euler a small . . . freighter. [We] boarded in Montreal, [Canada] . . . we were held up in Quebec because of a recent attack at the mouth of the St. Lawrence [River] and we had to wait until they cleaned it up . . . Then we met our convoy of about 40 ships.

Once in England, Wood-Kelly, unlike most of the other American women who flew for the ATA, was eventually assigned to a multinational group of flyers who lived at the country home of Sir Lyndsey Everard, an aviation enthusiast who maintained his own air field. On paper her job looked simple: fly planes from factories to the various air fields where they were needed. In reality, her task was far more complex.

We didn't have any radio. There were no navigational aids and there were a lot of balloon barrages . . . . When we'd go into a factory they'd let down the balloon barrages in time for us to get out and then they'd go up. . . . You just hoped that you didn't have some reason to have to return in a hurry.

Usually only bad weather or equipment malfunction grounded Wood-Kelly or her colleagues but one day in 1944 she was grounded for a different reason: D-Day, the Allied invasion of Europe, was about to begin.

That night after dinner, we're all on the lawn having coffee . . . suddenly the sky got so black you couldn't even see the sky or anything up there—but just aircraft, aircraft, aircraft so we knew that D-Day was the next day.

In the morning, Wood-Kelly and a friend loaded a jeep with strawberries and took them down to the waiting Allied troops.

So we did this in the drizzly rain and as you approach them with your strawberries what were they doing? Some writing letters . . . some having their hair cut, some reading comics, and all so grateful for your offering them strawberries and when you left. . . you [knew] that was probably going to be their last strawberry on this earth.

As the war in Europe wound down, Wood-Kelly began flying food to some of the liberated countries. She was even able to get to Paris where she joined her sister who was helping re-open the American embassy there. However the most memorable moment of this period was not V-E day but the death of President Franklin Roosevelt in April of 1945. The morning after his death she went, as usual, to a factory to pick up an airplane.

When I arrived the head man . . . came out, he looked more like a surgeon [with] a white coat down to his knees. He offered condolences and then . . . said, 'All the employees. . . are waiting for you in there in line to offer you their condolences.'