Night time take off for bombing operations
Heroes Remember
Night time take off for bombing operations
We used to go out and watch the take off at night. Oh, it was
8:30 take off or 8 o'clock, or whatever time. And you'd go
out to the end of the, the runway where the green guy with a
green light was there, there wasn't any radio control telling
them when to take off, it was somebody with an Aldous lamp
giving them the green light to take off.
And it was quite a thing to see. Let's say ten or fifteen
airplanes, there were forty or sixty engines running all at the
same time. They'd all start up and they'd taxi up. They were
given a time, maybe there was a minute or, or five minute delay
or something to come up. Eventually there would just be a line
of airplanes with these big four engine Merlins roaring. And it
was a real din, just on pre take off, the start up, the run ups,
every engine was run up to full power to check, to make sure it
was okay by the pilot. And then they'd taxi out and they'd taxi
on to the end of the button, as we called "on the button".
The green light would go and away they'd go. And you'd sort
of wave to the guys that you knew, well we waved to them all.
But that was one thing you'd see them take off. And say well,
I wonder, is it gonna be, is he gonna come back or not.
And there were always the few that didn't, and I have copies of
the operation sheets, that show the different crews and the
different positions they held in each crew and what aircraft
they were assigned. And then on the sheet we'd circle the ones
that didn't come back. It was kind of exciting and yet a trying
time for the ground crew, to welcome these people back, the first
thing they'd want to know was how it went, what the target
was, and the aircrew were, you know, were only too weak or,
to tell them what happened. The next thing there would be a
briefing, debriefing, where we'd have technical people, that
would take a record of all the flight engineer's reports,
of engine malfunction or whatever. They had to be repaired for
the next day. But the association, the ground crew, was ready
and nice welcome home to, to have these people come back.
But we'd have to start all over again, at 7 o'clock
in the morning or eight, and start grinding it out and
getting the airplanes ready to go again.
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