RAAF Flight Sergeant Frederick Newton and RAF Sergeant ER Hicks, two of the runway controllers at RAF Waddington, Lincolnshire, c. 18 April 1944. These photographs capture the last moments before take-off on operations. RAAF Flight Lieutenant Arnold Easton, a No. 467 Squadron navigator, described take-off in a letter to his family on 4 July 1944: At the end of the take off runway and on the grass to the side can be seen a kind of caravan painted like a draughts board with black and white squares that is to make it easily visible from the ground or the air. Outside this control box, as it is called, quite a large crowd of WAAFs, officers and men who aren't flying and who go there solely for the purpose of giving us a hearty wave and cheer as we take off. Just out to the side of this crowd is a man standing with an Aldis lamp in each hand. One throws a green light the other a red one. He flashes the green light at the aircraft he wants to take off next. You hear a roar of motors as the pilot in that aircraft manoeuvres his aircraft on to the runway and places it in a dead straight line with the runway. [Easton quoted in Mark Rowe, The luckiest men alive, privately published, 2003, pp. 20–21] [AWM UK1228]
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