This very junior member of pprune is tempted to try to recall wartime memories in the hope of prompting replies that clarify what he saw but did not understand. My cabinet-maker father was an aircraft rigger in WWI and some time in 1941 came to be employed by Handley Page at their London Colney (Park St) factory/aerodrome), just south of St Albans, where he was chargehand of a team that fitted Halifax rear wheels.
We lived in the gatehouse of a slightly grand house, Harperbury, Harper Lane, whose rather unfriendly occupants had to put up with us evacuees, whose home in London had been damaged, and we stayed there from about January 1942 until April 1944, when I was 11 years old. Naturally I became very interested in aviation, my weekly obsession being to find a newsagent with a remaining 6d. copy of "The Aeroplane Spotter". Among things spotted I recall the nightly roar of bombers assembling on the way to Germany and, in daylight (probably approaching D-Day), flocks of B26 Narauders and B25 Mitchells, perhaps on similar duties.
Various rare types were based at the HP works at different times, but the only one I clearly recall was a "flying wing" which memory says was an Armstrong Whitworth product. It flew many circuits, with our cottage being somewhere in the middle of its path. And there was also one that became my favourite subject for sketching, the handsome Westland Whirlwind, which I believe proved good only at making safe wheels-up landings.
I remember being surprised that Gerry never attacked the HP factory or aerodrome, at least during the years we lived thereabouts, but now that the history of the blitzkrieg is better understood that failure is not so surprising.
Happy days!
BernieC