Seems highly unlikely. Some Lincolns were at one time converted to airborne refueling tankers so I suggest you may have seen one with the hose extended with stabilizing wings on the end.

I’ve just looked at Syerston on Google Earth and does look as if there was at least a taxiway across the Fosse. And yes, there were many airfields within cycling distance. Our house was under the circuit for Newton, so spotting was good.

Was also not far from Hucknall. I once spotted a Wellington with a long cone-like thing at the tail trailing smoke and sounding peculiar. Wrote to the editor of “Spotter” magazine and he replied it was secret. Decades later I realized I had seen airtests of the Whittle jet engine, flying from Hucknall where Rolls Royce was based. History!

Don’t know about other airfields, but as young boys during WW2 we used to cycle to several in the Midlands and try to get as close as possible to the runways to watch aircraft landing. I can’t remember any fences, and since we approached via farmland, back lanes, and through fields as unobtrusively as possible we never got caught or warned. At one place near Newark we got so close to the threshold that pilots of the Lancasters landing must have seen us just underneath their wheels before touchdown. At another, Langar, we actually got onto the field and into an aircraft. So at that late point of the war, when the worry about invasion was over, security must have been pretty lax.

Thanks for reminding me!

Enjoyed your posting, Peter – it brought back many memories of that era. Checking my logbooks, I see that I was just about two years ahead of you. Went through 228 OCU at Leeming as a pilot and, just like you, later progressed from the Mozzie NF36 to the Meteor NF14. I think we were both lucky to survive the Mozzies as they were getting somewhat clapped out by then and there were many accidents.

I left the RAF in 1957 and emigrated to Canada with no regrets. As you point out, the NF aircraft we flew wouldn’t have been much use if the Russian bombers of that era had actually attacked, so the old WW2 style of training and P.I.s against comparatively slow targets flying straight and level were really a waste of time and we knew it. I didn’t stay on night fighters, and later really enjoyed the Meteor F8 which remained my favourite, particularly for aerobatic displays on Battle of Britain Days, even though I also flew some of he next generation fighters such as the Sabre and Hunter.

Now, I do fly an F16 on my computer’s flight simulator, but that’s all – sigh!

When I was a Pilot Attack Instructor (PAI) at the Central Gunnery School (Leconfield) in the early 1950’s they were still training turret gunners in Lincolns using attacking Spitfires as targets.

One day we had a contest. The turret gunnery instructors manned the Lincoln turrets and were attacked by us PAI instructors flying Meteors and Vampires, all using gunsight cameras to record the results. The Lincoln pilots (mainly wartime veterans from Bomber Command) flung the Lincolns all over the sky, corkscrewing and almost doing aerobatics, just as they probably had done in Lancasters in WW2 when desperate. It was an amazing sight.

Afterwards we all watched while the camera films from the turret gunners and fighters were screened. There were no cheers, mainly subdued silence, as results were clear. The turret instructors were almost all wildly off target while the fighter footage showed attack after attack that would clearly have shot down the bombers in real life. I expect the results would have been the same if we had been flying 109s, FW190s or Spitfires instead of jets.

My hat is off to anyone who flew bombers in WW2. I believe they stood little chance against experienced fighter pilots.

The BMARC Wiki entry provides a bit of information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMARC – the ambiguous name didn’t seem to stop the air raids!

Don’t know about BMARC, but I remember at the time of the raids we were told the main target was Ruston & Hornsby Ltd, who made diesel engines in Grantham.

I remember Ginger at FWS Leconfield in 1952. At that time he would have been highly amused and amazed to think his helmet would one day sell for £1600. I believe that’s him in the second row, sixth from the left.