One of the last of the Attagirls

Eleanor Wadsworth 1917-2020

Eleanor Wadsworth, who has died aged 103, was one of the last of the “Attagirls” – the 168 women who served with the Air Transport Auxiliary during the Second World War, flying military planes from their factories to airfields across the country. In total, she flew 590 hours in 22 different types of plane, including Hurricanes – but the Spitfire was always her favourite. “[It had a] beautiful, throbbing engine in the front,” she said in 2018. “It was so responsive, light to the touch. Like a beautiful sports car really.”

Eleanor Fish was born in Nottingham in 1917, and initially trained as an architect. But finding few opportunities in her home city, she took a job as an architectural assistant at the ATA, designing new facilities. After a while, she saw an advert calling for more female pilots. She was looking for a challenge, and “the thought of learning to fly for free was a great incentive, [so] I put my name down and didn’t think much about it”, she recalled. She started her training in 1943, and flew solo for the first time after only 12 hours’ flying.

Although the ATA’s civilian pilots did not see combat, their work (flying through all weathers, often without radios) was difficult and dangerous: 174 of them (13% of the total) were killed. Wadsworth made her final flight on 21 September 1945, and never piloted a plane again. She married Bernard, an ATA flight engineer, and had two children, before returning to her career in architecture. Her death leaves two surviving Attagirls: American Nancy Stratford, and Jaye Edwards, who is British, but resident in Canada.