“No radio,” I said. “A dead box on all channels.”
“Then how did you find this place?” he asked.
I was losing patience. The man was evidently one of those passed-over flight lieutenants, not terribly bright and probably not a flier, despite the handlebar moustache. A ground wallah. And drunk with it. Shouldn’t be on duty at all on an operational station at that hour of the night.
“I was guided in,” I explained patiently. The emergency procedures, having worked so well, now began to seem run-of-the-mill; such is the recuperation of youth. “I flew short, left-hand triangles, as per instructions, and they sent up a shepherd aircraft to guide me down. No problem.”
He shrugged, as if to say “If you insist.” Finally, he said: “Damned lucky, all the same. I’m surprised the other chap managed to find the place.”
“No problem there,” I said. “It was one of the weather aircraft from RAF Gloucester. Obviously, he had radio. So we came in here in formation, on a GCA. Then, when I saw the lights at the threshold of the runway, I landed myself.”
The man was obviously dense, as well as drunk.
“’Straordinary,” he said, sucking a stray drop of moisture off his handlebar. “We don’t have GCA. We don’t have any navigational equipment at all, not even a beacon.”
Now it was my turn to let the information sink in.
“This isn’t RAF Merriam St. George?” I asked in a small voice.
He shook his head.
“Marham? Chicksands? Lakenheath?”
“No,” he said, “this is RAF Minton.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” I said at last.
“I’m not surprised. We’re not an operational station. Haven’t been for years. Minton’s a storage depot. Excuse me.”
He stopped the car and got out. I saw we were standing a few feet from the dim shape of a control tower adjoining a long row of Nissen huts, evidently once flight rooms, navigational and briefing huts. Above the narrow door at the base of the tower through which the officer had disappeared hung a single naked bulb. By its light I could make out broken windows, padlocked doors, an air of abandonment and neglect. The man returned and climbed shakily back behind the wheel.
“Just turning the runway lights off,” he said, and belched.
My mind was whirling. This was mad, crazy, illogical. Yet there had to be a perfectly reasonable explanation.
“Why did you switch them on?” I asked.
“It was the sound of your engine,” he said. “I was in the officers’ mess having a noggin, and old Joe suggested I listen out the window for a second. There you were, circling right above us. You sounded damn low, almost as if you were going to come down in a hurry. Thought I might be of some use, remembered they never disconnected the old runway lights when they dismantled the station, so I ran down to the control tower and switched them on.”
“I see,” I said, but I didn’t. But there had to be an explanation.
“That was why I was so late coming out to pick you up. I had to go back to the mess to get the car out, once I’d heard you land out there. Then I had to find you. Bloody foggy night.”
You can say that again, I thought. The mystery puzzled me for another few minutes. Then I hit on the explanation.
“Where is RAF Minton, exactly?” I asked him.
“Five miles in from the coast, inland from Cromer. That’s where we are,” he said.
“And where’s the nearest operational RAF station with all the radio aids, including GCA?”
He thought for a minute.
“Must be Merriam St. George,” he said. “They must have all those things. Mind you, I’m just a stores johnny.”
That was the explanation. My unknown friend in the weather plane had been leading me straight in from the coast to Merriam St. George. By chance, Minton, abandoned old stores depot Minton, with its cobwebbed runway lights and drunken commanding officer, lay right along the in-flight path to Merriam’s runway. Merriam’s controller had asked us to circle twice while he switched on his runway lights ten miles ahead, and this old fool had switched on his lights as well. Result: Coming in on the last ten-mile stretch, I had plonked my Vampire down onto the wrong airfield. I was about to tell him not to interfere with modern procedures that he couldn’t understand when I choked the words back. My fuel had run out halfway down the runway. I’d never have made Merriam, ten miles away. I’d have crashed in the fields short of touchdown. By an amazing fluke I had been, as he said, damned lucky.
By the time I had worked out the rational explanation for my presence at this nearly abandoned airfield, we had reached the officers’ mess. My host parked his car in front of the door and we climbed out. Above the entrance hall a light was burning, dispelling the fog and illuminating the carved but chipped crest of the Royal Air Force above the doorway. To one side was a board screwed to the wall. It read RAF STATION MINTON.