The Mystery Mildenhall Hercules may have been found in the English Channel

[DaveWilko]

I know there is a chapter in the book "The Lightning Boys" that covers possibly something to do with this incident.

 

The particular chapter's author mentions a "hush-hush" telephone call to say that an American officer was due to arrive

and that he was to be shown every courtesy,his wishes complied with,no questions were to be asked in any way

shape or form and people were "ordered" to "look the other way" while this was going on.

 

The officer arrived,borrowed a fully fueled and armed "on alert" aircraft and took off.

 

Upon his return sometime later,it was noted that it wasn't "fully armed" any longer.

 

The aircraft was re-fueled,re-armed,post-flighted,pre-flighted and put back on alert.

 

As had been instructed,no question were asked and the American officer simply got into his vehicle and drove away.

 

It does sound rather bizarre I must admit.

Edited January 13, 2019 by DaveWilko

[Des]

I read that a while back but no longer have the book although if memory serves me right and it probably does not I seem to recall that the events therein are described as taking place at a weekend whereas they actually occurred on a Friday morning.

 

I also seem to recall the rather drawn out way in which the events are portrayed as taking place in the book and have always wondered if despite or even especially because of the Lightnings phenomenal but very thirsty performance if it actually would have had the endurance to depart East Anglia and catch up even with a Hercules down near the Channels Islands and return without AAR or landing elsewhere to refuel.

 

Also the comment as I recall in the book about the aircraft returning fully armed to the ramp via the Armament Section after landing does not seem to correspond with what I have read elsewhere about RAF practices , always thought that the idea was to keep aircraft with systems live and engines running as far away from weapons storage as possible and instead take the weapons to the powered down aircraft normally in such a location and facing in such a direction to cause minimum damage if anything went wrong.