East Anglia Air Traffic Control WW2

[oncemorealoft]

Just read that during WW2 there were over 700 air bases in Britain -- the bulk of these were in the East Anglia region.

Made me think that keeping incoming and outgoing trafic out of each other's way must have been a nightmare! How did they handle it?

[G-KEST]

Eyes firmly shut, fingers crossed and loads of time spent praying. It was a big sky.......... but not big enough on many occasions.
Cheers,
Trapper 69

[onion]

Ocemorealoft, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire had alot too.
G-KEST more aircrew were killed on non combat flights than were in combat.

[henry crun]

oncemorealoft: The short answer is, they didn't manage it during the war or for many years afterwards.

[LowNSlow]

My Dad's recolection was that they flew in an extended stream at assigned altitudes from Lisset to a form up point which for the Halifaxes of 4 Group was usually Beachy Head. The whole shooting match then turned onto their course for the first turning point. While they were doing this the USAAF would be forming up over the East coast before heading out on their courses.

[rotorfossil]

Even in my time, (late fifties/early sixties) it was incredibly complex in East Anglia by modern standards. One RAF air trafficer decide to try to model all the circuits and letdowns around our area at Oakington in a three dimensional wire model, and gave up because it looked like a tangled ball of string and was too frightening.
The good news was that you could shut the throttle anywhere over East Anglia at medium level and make it to a runway.
Also generally speaking people didn't seem to hit each other very often, although I had some close calls: Like meeting the Lightning Aerobatic Squadron (56 I think) head on in close formation, as a student and I came over the top of a loop in a Vampire T.11.

[HEATHROW DIRECTOR]

A far cry from today when, in very recent times, bombers heading east from the UK had to have slot times!!!!