Danny tells of a Close Encounter of the Too Close Kind.
The next runway incursion was rather more serious, but at least we'd nothing to do with it. There was this Junior Technician - name forgotten. He was a keen motorcyclist - nothing strange about that. Much of his spare time was spent tinkering with his beloved bike, spending hours making adjustments to the manufacturer's settings in the tenuous hope of screwing a few more rpm out of the thing.
He was a methodical young man, and had realised that, if he were to make any headway at all, it was necessary to test each individual change before proceeding with the next, otherwise he'd never know where he was. So a "standard" test track would be needed, but of course these are few and far between and none on offer locally......unless ?
Because, right under his nose, was this 1750 yard strip of concrete, dead straight and smooth and not used all that much as far he could see. It would be absolutely ideal - and free. The wish is father to the thought. Of course he knew that he would never get official permission for this, but possibly he could find another way to dispense with that...?
It would obviously have to be done under cover of darkness. As observant as he was methodical, he'd noticed that, in the quiet hours of the night when there was no (air) traffic, the Tower reduced the brilliance of the runway and approach lights to the minimum (Stud 5, IIRC) to lessen the electricity bill for the hard-pressed taxpayer. Conversely, when something was expected in, or going out, the wick would be turned up to Stud 4 or even 3 in good time. He could not be taken by surprise.
He chose a coal-black night. He would wear his kit of black leathers (helmets were not yet compulsory). The bike would, of course, be black as most things on the road were in those days, and of course with no lights. He should be invisible for all practical purposes. But not inaudible; here he took a calculated risk. He had heard about the triple-glazed, sound-proofed Tower, and with no air movements the Local Controller and any Assistants up there would probably be (shall we say) somnolent. Fire and Ambulance crews would be well bedded down.
And in any case revellers coming back to camp late through the Deeps from the bright lights of the mainland would often have a "burn up" down the lonely road: a bike wound up to the "blue note" was a common enough noise. And we all know how difficult it is to judge the direction of sound when you cannot see the source. The only remaining hazard was the road crossing. Of course the lights were simply left on green all night when there was no air movement, but headlamp beams would be visible 200 yards and more from either side of the runway.
Yet, then as now, there are always some who are convinced that they are in some way saving money by running on sidelights alone. And one such was abroad that night. It was an airman in an old pre-war "Perpendicular Gothic" Ford 8 ('Y' model). In those days "sidelights" were tiny coffee-cup sized parabolic things, stuck on the front wings, with a 5W bulb inside and "dim as a Toc-H lamp" (even when the glass was clean, and these were filthy). He was coming back from Emsworth and would soon be in his nice warm bunk. His car would be completely invisible from the side.
I'm told that the impact raised a bang comparable to the explosion of a 500lb bomb. The Ford took the blow on the back end. It spun the car round 180, but it didn't go over. Aghast, the shaking driver got out, thinking that he'd been struck by an aircraft and fully expecting to see bits and pieces of debris and casualties all over the place. But all was dark and silent as before. Scouting round he came across the back end of a bike lying some 30 feet away (the front just crunched-up scrap). It was clearly a write-off, as was his car, for the back wheel and axle had been pushed about a foot out of alignment. And the tank had sprung a leak, there was a pool of petrol forming underneath.
Suddenly remembering that he was on 3Party/F/T, he patted his pockets desperately in search of a match, but in vain (in any case, the Insurers would only have paid out market value - £10 top whack - but even that would be better than nothing).
Then from the darkness towards the sea came sounds of loud lamentation. At the same time, Local Control and Crash Crews had been jerked into wakefulness by the bang. Crash 1 had moved out and switched on its two searchlights. Almost the first sweep illuminated the sad scene.
The J/T had travelled several hundred feet along the runway, touching down on quite a low trajectory, and the friction had torn off the lower half of his leathers and removed a considerable amount of skin. He was bleeding like a stuck pig: it would be a long time before he could sit down in comfort, and he was being quite vocal about it. At the other end he had one or two broken bones and some spinal injury. The ambulance was on the spot at once, loaded him aboard, and plugged-in a good dose of morphia to quieten him down. It was clearly far more than a SSQ job; they whisked him straight off to hospital on the mainland. Crash crew dragged the wreckage off onto the grass to await collection by a scrap merchant, swept the area clean and all went back to their bunks. Job done ?....Well no, not quite.
The local constabulary got wind of this, and bristled. The accident had taken place on a public road, persons had been injured and property damaged. The Road Traffic Acts required that it should have been reported to them, and we had not done so. To this the RAF retorted with equal vigour that it was on a RAF airfield runway, and you can't get more "military" than that; therefore it was their business alone. At one stage it looked like "pistols for two and a coffin for one" for the Chief Constable and Station Commander, but somehow ruffled feathers were smoothed, and it didn't quite come to that. A number of tickets were purchased for the forthcoming Police Ball.
And all this is supposed to have happened before I came, and I cannot vouch for a single word of it.
Goodnight, all.
Danny42C.
Things that go Bump in the Night.