Copied from the Yorkshire-aircraft website above –
He was a very experienced pilot having learned to fly at the Hull Aero Club in 1937 and then took a job working for North Eastern Airways Ltd. [When the War begun he briefly served in the RAF but left to join the ATA and served in the ATA until his death in the Lake District.
North Eastern Airways operated DH Rapides and Airspeed Envoys.
I wonder why he did not stay in the RAF - was he considered 'too old' perhaps ? Or did they want him to start again from scratch ?
Some years ago I picked up a book called "We Flew Without Guns" being the wartime flying experiences of an American civil pilot named Genovese.
IIRC he held a commercial pilots licence and joined the US Army Air Corps with 700 odd hours but was 'washed out' (I think he wrote that they considered him somehow dangerous.)
However, he crossed the Atlantic and joined the ATA – ferrying all the stuff around the UK. He mentions flying mostly from Kirkbride, White Waltham and Ratcliffe – the private airfield of Sir Lindsay Everard, which became No 6 Ferry Pilots Pool.
Bored with that, he then volunteered to fly DC-3s on the Hump from Bengal/Assam to China. Above 20,000 ft over the mountains, watching out for Japanese fighters, with no oxygen for the pax and not much for the crew, 'Crew Resource Management' as it wasn't called then, consisted of the Co-Pilot having to surrender his oxygen supply to the Captain.
There is reference to Capt Short's young son in the above website.
At the end of the Key Publishing forum (second page) here –
Flight Captain Bernard Short. - Page 2
is a poignant post dated 2011 by Flight Engineer Arthur Bird's then equally young son.