COLLECTIONS

Air Transport Auxiliary

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Air Transport Auxiliary ferry pool in Ringway, 1945. John Yingst is seated third from the right. John Leonard Yingst Collection

From left to right, Rosamund Everard-Steenkamp (South Africa), Ann Wood-Kelly (USA), Winnie Fair (U.K.), Opal Anderson (USA). Ann Wood-Kelly Collection

Jacqueline Cochran. Ann Wood-Kelly Collection

John Leonard Yingst, England, 1943. John Leonard Yingst Collection

Description

Created in September 1939, the British Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) employed civilian flyers from thirty countries in addition the United Kingdom, with the United States providing the next-largest contingent. ATA pilots were responsible for ferrying aircraft for the Royal Air Force, the Fleet Air Arm, and the British army from factories to squadrons and shipping depots. In 1940 eight women pilots began flying for ATA (originally an all-male organization) with many more following their example, including about thirty from the United States.

More information on the history of ATA can be found at the British Air Transport Auxiliary web site at www.airtransportaux.org.

In 1980 the Hoover Institution Archives became a repository for the Air Transport Auxiliary records. Since then it has continued to acquire materials related to the ATA and presently has three collections relating to this subject:

Jane Spencer

The Spencer collection consists of materials amassed as part of the Air Transport Auxiliary History Project started by Jane Spencer in an effort to document American participation in the ATA. It contains completed questionnaires and letters from American, as well as British, pilots detailing their involvement with ATA, as well as their postwar activities. This collection includes writings, correspondence, flight logs, lists of ATA pilots, ATA newsletters and other printed matter, videotapes of interviews, and photographs. Jane Spencer, herself a pilot, spent three years in the ATA and was the last non-British pilot on duty.

Ann Wood-Kelly

Among the papers of Wood-Kelly, one of the twenty-four American women pilots to serve in the Air Transport Auxiliary, are correspondence, writings, personnel records, diaries, flight logbooks, manuals, newsletters, clippings, other printed matter, and photographs, relating to airplane ferrying in Great Britain during World War II, the history of aviation, and the role of women in aviation, in particular that of Jacqueline "Jackie" Cochran.

John Leonard Yingst

This collections features logbooks, service records, identification documents, and photographs of John Leonard Yingst. An American pilot, born in 1915 in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, he served as a flying officer with the Air Transport Auxiliary in Great Britain from January 1941 until April 1945.

Finding Aid
Wood-Kelly (Ann) papers