The Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS; often pronounced as an acronym) was the women's branch of the British Army during the Second World War.

The council decided that the ATS would be attached to the Territorial Army, and the women serving would receive two thirds the pay of male soldiers.

[2] One application of this specialist camera was in gunnery practice, where a pair of Cinetheodolites a known distance apart filmed the shell bursts from anti-aircraft artillery against target drones towed by an aircraft.

By comparing the filmed location of the shells' detonation and the target, accurate calculations of their relative position could be made that would reveal any systematic error in the gunsights.

[5] There was also provision made in the act for objection to service on moral grounds, as about a third of those on the conscientious objectors list were women.

Many other searchlight and anti-aircraft regiments on Home Defence followed, freeing men aged under 30 of medical category A1 for transfer to the infantry.

[11] By VE Day and before demobilization of the British armed forces, there were over 190,000 members of the women's Auxiliary Territorial Service.

Famous members of the ATS included Mary Churchill, youngest daughter of the prime minister, Winston Churchill,[12] and Princess Elizabeth, later Queen Elizabeth II, eldest daughter of the King, who trained as a lorry driver, ambulance driver and mechanic.

When other ranks were assigned to mixed-sex Royal Artillery batteries of Anti-Aircraft Command starting in 1941, they were accorded the Royal Artillery ranks of gunner, lance-bombardier, and bombardier (instead of private, lance-corporal, and corporal), and wore the RA's braided white lanyard on the right shoulder and the 'grenade' collar badge above the left breast pocket of their uniform tunic.