When the Royal Flying Corps was recruiting its first pilots before the First World War, cavalry officers were preferred for their “good hands”. To judge from the photographs in Giles Whittell's most engaging book, female pilots of the Air Transport Auxiliary in the Second World War were preferred for their good legs. Since they were at first allowed to fly only in skirts, not trousers, there might indeed have been good reason for it.

Besides its intensely human stories, Whittell's moving tribute to these pioneers of semi-military flight is an account of women on the cusp of change in both war and peace, for the women pilots of the Air Transport Auxiliary were the first in any occupation in Britain to be conceded equal pay.

The ATA was formed to ferry aircraft from the factories to the RAF's airfields in Britain, freeing the RAF's pilots for operations. The preservation of the status of the pilots as non-combatants was, initially, something of an obsession. So the aircraft were flown unarmed and usually without instruments, whose accidental loss to the enemy would have given away our marginal technological lead.

Most of the ATA's pilots were men from the grounded civil aviation industry, and former RAF pilots with disabilities. They joked that the letters ATA stood for Ancient and Tattered Airmen. But in the Twenties and Thirties a significant number of women had qualified as pilots. It seemed obvious that this pool of talent should be used, although the authorities had misgivings about all sorts of things, not just trousers — for example, the strength required to fly the larger aircraft, whose control hydraulics were still crude.

The men of the ATA were very much officer class. Unlike the RAF, whose prewar apprenticeship scheme brought in many working-class boys, those who had qualified with Imperial Airways and others were of a smarter and racier stamp. It was even more true of the ATA's women, whose only route to a licence was via the prewar flying schools and a great deal of cash. And, too, there were heiresses in North and South America who risked the U-boats to come and do their bit in somebody else's war. As Whittell says: “In a rumpled sort of way, the ATA was the most exclusive flying outfit of the war.”

And so the girls had names such as Audrey Sale-Barker, Henrietta Stapleton-Bretherton, Zita Irwin, Lettice Curtis, Diana Barnato Walker. They stare from their Lenare portraits just like many another Mayfair gel; but by God could they fly. And when through mechanical failure they occasionally had to bale out and land in the “drink”, they bobbed to the surface, hailed passing fishing boats and hitched back to the ATA's headquarters at White Waltham in Berkshire to go up again. And they all wanted to fly the Spitfire — “the perfect lady's aeroplane”.

The Spitfire's allure is both the inspiration and theme of Leo McKinstry's Spitfire: Portrait of a Legend. Everything about it is of epic status, beginning with the heroic race against terminal illness of its designer, R.J.Mitchell. McKinstry has searched out facts and recollections on an impressive scale to tell the story of the plane's conception, manufacture, role in the Battle of Britain and development.

It is a story of genius, jealousy, intrigue, courage — and sex. For if the female pilots of the ATA were desperate to fly the Spitfire, the RAF's fighter pilots regarded the plane as little short of a mistress. The Spitfire was certainly an aphrodisiac, and in 1940 seems to have been the best girl-bait in the world. It will never again be possible to fly from Norwich airport — the former RAF Horsham St Faith — without McKinstry's image of fighter pilots jumping out of the ditch at the edge of the runway, desperately pulling up their trousers as the “scramble” bell rang.

McKinstry is less than convincing in denigrating Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding's handling of the Battle of Britain, however. It betrays a lack of appreciation of the difference between the levels of command when he equates the commander of Fighter Command with the commander of Eighth Army, claiming that Dowding's hands-off style was as if Montgomery had told his corps commanders to arrange things among themselves at Alamein.

And it is as well that Fighter Command's tireless ground crew had sharper eyes than McKinstry's proofreader, who has left the book peppered with howlers, not least, in one place, Dowding's name. But for all this, Portrait of a Legend is an utterly absorbing book.

It is hardly surprising that the women of the ATA all wanted to fly the Spitfire. But some qualified even for the Lancaster bomber, with four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines to the Spitfire's one.There were those who might have been called “masculine”: Amy Johnson was certainly proud of having bowled over-arm at cricket at school. But some played up their “femininity”, as one of the surviving pilots, Mary de Bunsen, recounts:

“‘My Dear,' one or other would exclaim in the mess, ‘I've got my first Hudson (or Mitchell, or whatever it might be) and I know I shall crash and I've got a pain (cold, temperature, etc).' And they would totter out, leaving a trail of handkerchiefs, lipsticks, handbags etc, which would be picked up by willing (male) hands. They would then fly whatever it was superbly to its destination, where they would be assisted out of the aeroplane and the same pantomime would take place.”

In fact, the ATA's female pilots lost fewer aircraft than their male colleagues. But losses there were, and of pilots too. Although the death of Amy Johnson has been told many times, not least in the film They Flew Alone (1942), with Anna Neagle, Whittell tells the story with suspense, perfect context and technical detail, so that the lump in the throat is a large one.

It is quite impossible to read Whittell's book without emotional engagement. There is much laughter to be had, and much anger, too, at the restrictions under which these women flew, albeit seemingly reasonable enough at the time. One cannot but be humbled seeing and reading that in fact Mary de Bunsen was no society gel, but rather the bespectacled “daughter in waiting”, with a hole in the heart, and lame from polio.

Above all, one is all but overwhelmed by the sense of utter admiration. And of gratitude, indeed. For if, in Churchill's words, “never was so much owed by so many to so few”, then those few, as well the many, owed a very great deal to these fewer still.

Spitfire Women by Giles Whittell

Harper £20

Spitfire by Leo McKinstry

John Murray £20

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