I can imagine flying at 60 feet at night - but I wouldn't want to.
They were gallant, brave and steadfast young men all and first among them the incomparable Gibson - a Wing Commander DSO*, DFC* at age 24 and then a VC.
Barnes Wallis said of him, "For some men of great courage and adventure, inactivity was a slow death. Would a man like Gibson ever have adjusted back to peacetime life? One can imagine it would have been a somewhat empty existence after all he had been through. Facing death had become his drug. He had seen countless friends and comrades perish in the great crusade. Perhaps something in him even welcomed the inevitability he had always felt that before the war ended he would join them in their Bomber Command Valhalla. He had pushed his luck beyond all limits and he knew it. But that was the kind of man he was…a man of great courage, inspiration and leadership. A man born for war…but born to fall in war."
Harris described him thus: "As great a warrior as this island ever produced."
Will we see their like again? I hope so.