Diversion Raids

One of the first trips that we made was the 24th of May, 1944. They couldn’t sit on the ground and watch. They had to get into their air craft and take off and get up to your area which meant they had to expend fuel and time and everything else in order to come up against you in case you were the real thing. But as we were only training, we would more or less come into the area and then turn around and come back out. In the meantime, of course, they would have to get back and reload, rearm, refuel and they were also a little bit tired because they’d been alerted and they were full of anxiety. By the time they were on the ground, the real load of bombers would be heading out from England and they, their defences would be half shot already. They didn’t have fresh crews waiting at the dispersals ready to take off. They had people who had had a trip and were a little bit disgusted that it was a fake and now they had to sit and oops here comes the real thing and they’re not ready. So it had a very useful purpose to sending the crews out on these diversion raids.