Interesting Aerodynamic Occasion
It was a dark and stormy night and the Captain said to the Mate, actually it was a quite warm night at a little strip on an island in the east of the Med, later to gain some fame for an incident concerning brakes and a Herc, and nobody said anything to anybody and there lies the problem.
It was the culmination of an Infill/Exfill mission with the boys from Hereford practicing on a nearby major airbase. The first part of the sortie had gone off fine, the landing being carried out with the Co on NVG, ( this was pre 1980 so the flight deck was not NVG compatible apart from tapeing over some of the brighter lights on the Panel, those being mainly the warning indications! ) and the recovery also being quickly carried out, the fact that the Op name was Wild Goose may have been the reason the boys stayed close to the aircraft, they must have seen the film as well.
Arriving back at the little strip an engine running offload was carried out under operational conditions, only red lighting down the back and the Captain offered a lift back to the main base to the air trafficers at the strip to save them driving back to the main base. The Loadie, G.E. and dispatcher then get involved in tidying up the back of the aircraft and then securing the air traffic Sherpa and the air traffic guys board the aircraft and lurk by the wheelwells. Captain feels he needs update on whether the aircraft is ready to go and as everybody down the back is off the intercom asks for confirmation on are we ok to depart. A member of the flight deck goes to the ladder and gives an interrogative thumbs up to the bods he can see down the back and receives back a confirmatory thumbs up. On being told all is well Captain advances throttles and releases brakes and commences take off run.
Sheer hell brakes loose down the back as the Loadie is under the Sherpa chaining it down, the G.E. is approaching the ramp hinge line with an armful of strops and the dispatcher is taken off balance and falls over just behind the G.E. taking his legs out from under him with both off them ending up by the ramp controls with the G.E. sitting on the dispatcher. Instant thought of "O. ...T" and swift selection of up ramp got the ramp above horizontal before rotation and up and locked shortly after.
This was followed by the Loadie, A... ......y, storming onto the flight deck to find out what the hell was happening, if not quite in those words.
At the very quiet and rather alcoholic debrief afterwards it turned out that it was the air traffic bods who had received and returned the thumbs up thinking it was, are you on board?, yes we are! You might ask didn't any body see the Ramp and Door warning light, remember the cockpit wasn't NVG compatible and some lights had been taped over, guess which was one of them as the infill was a door open approach and landing with the ADS arms disconnected and stowed. It went to prove that sometimes you perceive things to be what you expect rather than what they really are!
I always wondered what the effect of taking off with the ramp in that position would be but didn't ask as I decided I might not like the answer.