SPITFIRES

Women who dared.

Journalist Aikman draws on diaries, letters, and interviews to create a brisk, lively account of nine intrepid American women, among the 25 who joined Britain’s Air Transport Auxiliary, the civilian arm of the RAF. Unlike the U.S., which prohibited women from flying in the military, the U.K. was desperate for pilots. Responding to the need, star aviatrix Jackie Cochran sent invitations to 76 women with more than 300 hours of flying time, some as stunt flyers, crop dusters, or flying instructors. The American “Atta-Girls” came from widely varied backgrounds, from hardscrabble lives to high society; from America’s youngest flying instructor, at 21, to a 32-year-old, the oldest and most experienced, with 1,800 flying hours. All were ambitious, defiant, eager to reinvent themselves. “Professionally,” Aikman writes, “they mastered jobs that demanded technical expertise, physical strength, steely valor, and quick judgment.” The first group to arrive in 1942 were shocked by bombed-out cities, food deprivations, and the chilly British homes where they were billeted. There was a chilly reception, too, caused by a stark cultural disconnect between the boisterous Americans and the upper-class British women of the ATA. Aikman recounts the pilots’ friendships, romances, marriages, and losses, and the challenges they faced flying unfamiliar planes across unfamiliar terrain, sometimes in threatening weather. All confronted danger with every flight: “The knowledge that something as simple as an oil leak, a peculiar propeller mishap, a moment of inattention, or an unexpected conjuring of fog could bring about sudden, bolt-from-above death.” By 1944, the original 25 had been depleted to 13. Despite hardship and fear, though, they depicted their years as an Atta-Girl as nothing less than a “golden period” of their lives.

Engaging portraits of a spirited crew.