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The role played by more than 160 women who delivered Spitfires and other wartime aircraft from the factories to the Battle of Britain pilots is to be officially recognised with a commemorative badge, Gordon Brown announced today.

The Prime Minister told the Commons he backed a campaign led by a Labour MP to honour “the Spitfire ladies”. More than 20 of the 167 female pilots of the wartime Air Transport Auxiliary are still alive, out of 101 ATA surviving members.

The campaign by Nigel Griffiths, Labour MP for Edinburgh South, was highlighted by The Times in a story about the female pilots published on February 1.

Mr Brown gave his backing after Mr Griffiths asked at Prime Minister’s Question Time whether he would create a badge of honour for the Spitfire ladies of the Second World War and the men who also flew the wartime aircraft as part of the Air Transport Auxiliary.

The 167 women and 1,065 men of the ATA came from 28 countries to ferry more than 300,000 aircraft to frontline airbases “during this country’s direst hour of need”, Mr Griffiths said.

A civilian unit founded in 1938, the ATA included ground school instructors, ground engineers, crash rescue teams, nurses and doctors, administration staff and Air Cadets.

Its best-known female member was Amy Johnson, the first woman to fly solo from Britain to Australia in 1930, a journey of 11,000 miles. She joined the ATA in 1940 and was promoted to First Officer. In January 1941, she died while flying an Airspeed Oxford from Blackpool to RAF Kidlington in Oxfordshire.

All now in their 80s and 90s, at least seven of the surviving Spitfire ladies live in the United Kingdom, while five are in the United States, four in Canada, one in Chile, one in Australia, one in South Africa and one in Poland. The Polish Spitfire pilot is Jadwiga Pilsudska, the daughter of Josef Pilsudska, the founder of modern Poland. She joined the ATA in 1940.

Among the survivors in the UK are Joy Lofthouse, Maggie Frost, Diana Walker, Lettice Curtis, Freydis Sharland, Mary Hunter and Maureen du Popp.

Mrs Frost, now 87, welcomed the campaign to give official recognition to her and her colleagues.

“The Spitfire was lovely to fly. I was lucky because the weather was kind to me, but there were others [15] who lost their lives flying in bad weather,” she said.

“I was 23 when I joined the ATA. I was 5ft 2¾ when the minimum height requirement was 5ft 4in, but I got through. You had to fly the Spitfires without any radio system, and the only way you knew you could land at an airbase was when someone stood on the runway with a green light rather than a red light.”

Mrs Hunter, now 94, who lives in St David’s, Pembrokeshire, flew Spitfires, Hurricanes and Mustangs from March, 1941 to May, 1943. She said she had fond memories of her wartime role but, on hearing of the special honour to be given to the Spitfire ladies, she said: “There are so many others who are equally deserving.”

Mrs Hunter had to leave the ATA when she was expecting her first child. She was told by her commanding officer that she was “not allowed to carry that sort of passenger”.

Mr Griffiths said: “I am delighted that the wartime achievements of the survivors of the ATA are to be recognised at long last. Frankly, without the efforts of the ATA, the Luftwaffe could have overwhelmed us.”

Mr Brown said in the Commons: “We now have medals for those people who are veterans of the war. We have medals for those who served in the Land Army. It is right, in my view, that we have recognition for the women Spitfire pilots who did so much to protect and defend the air force and other military services.”

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