Good Shows, Swans & now DUCKS!!??
TaxyDual,
You embarrass me with your praise at #20. I tried to turn this "Good Show" down, as like you it seems like praise for doing your job. Did the cooks in the airmen's mess ever get praise for a fine cake they baked? (emm.. did we get cake?).
I didn't know about the Swan but early one grey winters morning, low cloud, occnl. snosh. Caravan parked up (Hoping not to have to put it out but to return it to it's lock up and back to my Officers type 5 MQ complete with avtur fired central heating) when out of the gloom comes Duck formation, a flight of three, downwind for the larger of the two ponds at the back of the tower.
Alls well until, at short finals, Duck lead notices that all is not well with the intended landing site and hits the TOGA button and instructs Duck 2&3 to overshoot. Downwind again with a slight increase in seperation, Duck lead on base leg to finals and every available feather hanging out, wing tip feathers working ten to the dozen to maintain a slow approach and, with legs outstretched, makes contact at the very edge of the ICE COVERED pond and slides gently off the end into a small stretch of clear water on the other side. Duck two emulates leads perfect arrival but Duck 3 (Junior Pilot?) arriving a bit slower, stumbles on touchdown, comes off his undercarriage and slithers to a halt short of the water. It was quite funny watching it get to its feet, waggle its backside and try to walk nonchalantly to the clear water to join his two mates who must have been laughing their beaks off at him. It was all go at RLG Dishforth!
p.s. I always thought that those two ponds, just the other side of the fence, behind the tower, looked a bit too man made and could possibly have been constructed by the Luftwaffe some time in the early 1940's but I found this on a Wiki about Dishforth:
"RAF Dishforth was so successful in its night operation bombing raids that Hitler himself ordered a raid against the airfield. The raid was completely unsuccessful as the bombing party was shot out of the sky over Gloucestershire" I wonder did maybe one manage to evade and attack? we'll probably never know. A342