Night time take off for bombing operations

We used to go out and watch the take off at night. Oh, it was 8:30 take off or eight o'clock, or whatever time. And you'd go out to the end of the, the runway where the green guy with a green light was there, there wasn't any radio control telling them when to take off, it was somebody with a (inaudible) lamp giving them the green light to take off. And it was quite a thing to see. Let's say ten or fifteen airplanes, there were forty or sixty engines running all at the same time. They'd all start up and they'd taxi up. They were given a time, maybe there was a minute or, or five minute delay or something to come up. Eventually there would just be a line of airplanes with these big four engine Merlins roaring. And it was a real din, just on free take off, the start up, the run ups, every engine was run up to full power to check, to make sure it was okay by the pilot. And then they'd taxi out and they'd taxi on to the end of the button, as we called on the button. The green light would go and away they'd go. And you'd sort of wave to the guys that you knew, well we waved to them all. But that was one thing you'd see them take off. And say well I wonder, is it gonna be, is he gonna come back or not. And there were always the few that didn't, and I have copies of the operation sheets, that show the different crews and the different positions they held in each crew and what aircraft they were assigned. And then on the sheet we'd circle the ones that didn't come back. It was kind of exciting and yet a trying time for the ground crew, to welcome these people back, the first thing they'd want to know was how it went, what the target was, and the aircrew were, you know, were only too weak or, to tell them what happened. The next thing there would be a briefing, debriefing, where we'd have technical people, that would take a record of all the flight engineer's reports, of engine malfunction or whatever. They had to be repaired for the next day. But the association, the ground crew, was ready and nice welcome home to, to have these people come back. But we'd have to start all over again, at seven o'clock in the morning or eight, and start grinding it out and getting the airplanes ready to go again.