Radio Girl by David Dufty

Author:David Dufty
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2020-03-17T00:00:00+00:00

19

AN SOS FROM MARY BELL

The formation of the WAAAF was eventually approved by cabinet in February 1941 … This approval was only given because it had been found to be impossible to get enough male signal personnel.

Mary Bell, WAAAF commanding officer, 1941

Violet’s stance against the air force was softened by a desperate call for help from the newly appointed director of the WAAAF in April.

Mary Bell had held a pilot’s licence since 1926 and had an intimate knowledge of the air force through her marriage to Group Captain J.T. Bell. Since forming the Women’s Air Training Corps in Brisbane in 1939 she had been lobbying the air force for the enlistment of women, with considerable success. Chief of air staff (CAS) Charles Burnett had invited her in 1940 to provide a report on the possibility of a women’s auxiliary air force. As a result of this work, Bell became the obvious choice to lead the service, if it was ever to come into existence.1

In January 1941, the Advisory War Council approved the creation of the WAAAF, but cautioned that numbers should be kept as low as possible—‘the minimum number for the minimum period’. Mary Bell was made acting director in February, the minister making the whole thing public in March.2

Her dream of a women’s air force had become a reality and she was running it, but Bell’s troubles were only just beginning. She later described her brief time as head of the WAAAF:

I was given an office containing two tables, one chair, one form, one telephone and nothing else and told to get on with it. Luckily I had been associated with the R.A.A.F. since its formation when my husband was one of the original officers, so knew most of the senior officers and my way about generally. This made it possible for me to cope with a situation that to anyone not used to the air force and its ways would have been virtually impossible.3

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