Upon turning 18, Betty Hutton decided to join the air force and began her military career in the RAF Balloon Command, working in both London and Manchester. When the air force started to reduce the use of barrage balloons – at the same time deciding it wasn’t a role fit for a woman after all, much to the serving women’s chagrin – Betty opted to become an aircraft mechanic. After successfully completing her training Betty began working on the Whitley aircrafts, but as an assistant she wasn’t allowed to do any of the critical mechanical work herself. Determined to progress her role, she undertook further training and passed out as a Fitter 2A, holding sole responsibility for carrying out mechanical work on the Wellington aircraft, which she found frightening but exhilarating. Betty’s story of course contains personal accounts of loss and sadness that serve as stark reminders of the heartbreak and devastation of war, but it’s abundantly clear to see – despite the great modesty with which she shares her memories – the significant contribution her hard work and commitment made to the war effort.

Joyce experienced bombing in WW2 and her mother had a narrow escape. At nineteen, in 1947, she joined the WAAF and trained in air traffic control and radar. The Airlift started the day that Joyce was posted to Germany, and she was initially ambivalent and apprehensive about helping the Germans, due to wartime events. She had never been abroad before and found the experience quite daunting. When she arrived in Germany she became aware of the deprivation that the population were experiencing and how they too were bombed. At the RAF HQ in Ahnsen she worked as a ‘Hoe Girl’ using a table-top hoe to plot the movement of aircraft during the Airlift and this task demanded a high level of accuracy. As well as this duty she worked in communications, relaying messages from aircraft to officers. There were three air ‘corridors’ to Berlin differentiated by height, with an aircraft landing every three to four minutes. The work was hard and constant, with leave once a month, when she and her colleagues were sent to a hotel and during this period she met her husband to be, who was also working on the base. During her time overseas she met Germans of her age and spoke to them about Nazism and the Hitler Youth. They said it was like the British Scouts and tried to explain their enthusiasm for Hitler. These young Germans professed to have no knowledge of the Holocaust, partly because they lived in the countryside.