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Annette Elizabeth Mahon
Annette Elizabeth Mahon (married name Annette Elizabeth Hill; 21 October 1918 – 7 October 2013) was a pioneering pilot and the only Irish woman member of the Air Transport Auxiliary. Life Annette Elizabeth Mahon was born in Dublin on 21 October 1918. She was one of six children. Her father worked in the Post Office. Mahon attended a Sacred Heart convent in Dublin and went on to get a job with an accountancy firm until the war. During her childhood in Dublin there had been a visit from Sir Alan Cobham's Flying Circus and Mahon had taken a ride and for a moment been given control of the airplane. When the war began Mahon moved to Northern Ireland to drive ambulances with the Women's Auxiliary Air Force in Ulster. There she heard about the Air Transport Auxiliary and in 1942 she applied for the ATA pilot training. She was accepted and was sent to the Elementary Flying Training School at Prestwick in Scotland. She was posted to Prestwick once training was complete and ferried plan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Air Transport Auxiliary
The Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) was a British civilian organisation set up at the start of the Second World War with headquarters at White Waltham Airfield in Berkshire. The ATA ferried new, repaired and damaged military aircraft between factories, assembly plants, transatlantic delivery points, maintenance units (MUs), scrapyards, and active service squadrons and airfields, but not to naval aircraft carriers. It also flew service personnel on urgent duty from one place to another and performed some air ambulance work. Notably, around 10% of its pilots were women, and from 1943 they received equal pay to their male colleagues, a first for the British government. Mission The initial plan was that the ATA would carry personnel, mail and medical supplies, but the pilots were immediately needed to work with the Royal Air Force (RAF) ferry pools transporting aircraft. By 1 May 1940 the ATA had taken over transporting all military aircraft from factories to maintenance units to hav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
