Step Turn (#5),
This snippet from my Page 153 #3056 on "Pilot's Brevet" (MilitaryAviation Forum) may amuse: (We are at RAF Willingdon Island, Cochin, S.India, summer 1945).
"I was disentangling myself from my harness and about to climb out, when the Duty Flight Corporal came dashing up indignantly in full Traffic Warden mode: "You can't leave that there 'ere !". I clearly remember shrugging my Mae West off one shoulder to show my rank cuff. It made little difference: "You can't leave that there 'ere, SIR !"
Why not ? For answer he pointed wordlessly at the Liberator, and I saw that the lower half of the main wheels had sunk through the tarmac. It was down to the axles already, and how they were ever going to get it out, Heaven only knows (like Fareastdriver's C5 at Honiara a few Posts ago).
It seemed that the local contractor who built the airfield had skimped on this patch, there was no foundation - nothing but sand under a thin skin of tarmac ! My Corporal was worried that the same might happen to me. I reassured him: it was very unlikely as I was only staying an hour or so, whereas the Lib had taken a night and a day to get into that state.
At lunch in the Mess, it was a major topic of conversation, and many were the solutions on offer. One of the better ones was: as the Far East war was over and it was a Lend-Lease aircraft, we should invite the Americans to come and take it away - if they could. Otherwise we'd put a low chain fence round it, leave it and declare it a War Memorial ! "