As a teenager Joy Lofthouse would read Aeroplane magazine “to understand what my boyfriends were talking about”. One issue carried an advert encouraging women to train as pilots for the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), the organisation that ferried Spitfires and other aircraft between factories, maintenance units and airfields.
Although she had never flown and did not even possess a driving licence, Lofthouse applied. “You couldn’t just stand there, useless, dumb, when the boys were talking about planes,” she told Jacky Hyams, the author of a book called Spitfire Stories that was published last month.
Unbeknown to the 20-year-old Lofthouse, her sister, Yvonne — who was 15 months older and had already been widowed — had also joined the ATA, but under her married name, which