From my perspective as a complete and utter civilian ... It was a quite extraordinary weekend and Monday evening.
Over the weekend RAF Fairford had filled-up with lots of KC10s and extra KC135s, and a load more arrived at Mildenhall too, so we made the very long journey between the two bases. On the Sunday morning I was with some friends, one of whom worked at LATC, and he mentioned another load of KC10s and KC135s arriving at Mildenhall that day. That afternoon we made the long drive up to Mildenhall (again) to see them.
On Monday, back at work, I was chatting with a friend about all these going-on, and he convinced me that we should go back up to Mildenhall that evening (again!) so that he could see them all. A quick stop at his house, and we picked-up his father-in-law who came along just for the drive.
We got quite close the Mildenhall by about 6.30pm and we saw two KC10s depart. When we got to the end of the runway there was a very long line of KC10s and KC135s waiting to depart. I remember seeing a vehicle pull-up in front of a KC10, somebody got out and waved a bag/satchel; the side door of the KC10 opened, a very long rope was lowered and attached to the bag, and the bag was lifted up into the aircraft. The tankers started to depart, and we became aware of the F111s departing from Lakenheath nearby - it seemed to be a never-ending stream.
We just assumed it was some sort of exercise, and never connected the tankers and the F111s. However, my mate was happy, and F-I-L was over the moon!
We drove back home after the excitement had died down, and I got home at about 10.30pm. I was about to go to bed at about 11.30 when my pager went-off. I was on-call for work, but it was quite rare to be called. I 'phone the office, and I was told that so-and-so system had failed. I said that I'd come in and fix it. I drove all the way to work listening to the radio; nothing was mentioned on the midnight news. I got to work just before 00.30 and by the time I'd got into the office it was just after 00.30. I was most surprised to see somebody else in the office, and he told me that they'd just announced the raid at 00.30. At that point all the bits of the jigsaw fell into place!