Chugalug,
As always, a timely and pertinent comment (caught me with my last cup of cocoa !). Your interlocutor locutes, as follows :-
You were right the first time: (moving us 2,000 miles to no purpose was not a really bright idea). As for our Airships having Contingency Plans - they wouldn't have recognised a Contingency Plan if it bit them on the bum. The whole war out there had been conducted "off the cuff" from the beginning.
This was inevitable: the enemy had the advantage of surprise: "
Thrice armed is he that hath his quarrel just - but four times armed is he who gets his smack in fust!" We could only react.
"Events, dear boy" had led us round by the nose, from the time the impregnable Singapore and unsinkable "
Prince of Wales" fell to the Japanese version of "Events".
When the Mossies first started to fall apart, the official reaction was: "this isn't really happening, it's just a bad dream, if we close our eyes tight it'll go away".
AFAIK, the "reverse-conversion" decision was not taken until mid- October, whereas the Mossies had been claiming lives since May. If the Air Staff had seen the red light
then, there would still have been time to "hold" the six VV squadrons in readiness west and south of Calcutta (just in case).
"Contingency Plan" ? Of a sort, I suppose - but made "on the hoof" after disaster had struck them. But isn't hindsight a wonderful thing !
As it turned out all this is acedemic, as will shortly appear. (Oh, it
was Yelahanka AFB - and civil airport now, I think)
Goodnight, Danny.