NIGHT FLYING

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 7, Issue 43, 25 January 1944, Page 5

NIGHT FLYING

DISTINGUISHING DARK SHAPES

Many of us have wondered what it must be like <to lly through the blackness as our airmen do night after night. Wing-Commander Peter Wickham Barnes gave a vivid picture —if you can describe darkness jts, vivid—of night flying in wartime, when he spoke the other evening in a BBC Radio l News Reel to listeners overseas. He began with the take-off in England,, where the blackout is "appallingly severe." As first, he said,, the difficulties are great, but as time goes on the young airman gets a little more experienced—particularly when he goes across to Europe, because there, where people are not. all as sympathetic to the. war effort as' they might be,, all sorts ot strange indications are given to the flying men. Some of them are only slight, but the fliers get to iearn them and know their meaning. For instance,- towns are: seldom completely blacked out, for on a very dark night there's a tiny twinkle all over them, due,, probably, lie thought, to a thousand little chinks of light and ''someone knocking their ash out of. the window— repeated, tens of thousands of limes over." And though when less experienced, an airman might pass it by and perhaps even not notice it, with practice he picks: it out quite easily. What is far more is recognising the country outside the towns. Under absolute blackout conditions, the landscape lias to be judged by graduations of blackness. ''Something is" black and some-, thing else is still blacker," was how the speaker described it. Woods look very black; ploughed fields look very black. Rivers, on the other hand,, look quite light grey and sometimes even silvery. Often you get confused by something a little outside, your former experience. You may spend quite a time wondering "what on earth this chequer board pattern of silver grey squares is beneath you, and you need a very largescale map to tell you that you're over a lot of water-c. ess beds." Sometimes mountains are mistaken for woods, lakes appear to be plainsand, most simple mistake of all are misinterpretations of patches of moonlight .caused, by cloud shadows. In time, airmen, come to realise that there, is "nothing too strange for them to be over —it may be a golf course, it may be a lunatic asylum."