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Operational Flight. When he flew to Britain last week, the Ferry Commander called it an "operational flight," gave no hint of his purpose. Whether or not he was due for promotion, it was Sir Frederick's first chance to check up on the way his long airline operated.
If he was checking up, he perhaps made some notes on his cuff as he went along: noted how the wind seeped through the flimsy walls of the Eastbound Inn at the Newfoundland base as the ferry crews waited for the weather to lift. He would need no notes to remember the radio jam as the squadron approached Britain, and plane after plane called for bearings from ground stations.
The rest would have been "routine." The long screaming run down the airport as the plane labored to lift its heavy load of gasoline. The plane-hungry bogs around the airport giving way to the long swells of the Atlantic under the plane's wings. The long slant upward above the overcast for a tailwind and air too cold and dry for icing. The navigator's intent face reflected from the cabin windows as he read his sextant. The creeping cold of high altitude. The bulbous oxygen masks.
The ferry flights, according to the command, are all routine, as monotonous for passengers as they are for the men who make them regularly. The only thrill comes when the plane passes the invisible point of no return, the point where it has enough gas to get across, too little to turn back against headwinds that blow from the west. The only real excitement is the landing—circling a field so well camouflaged that even experienced pilots have a hard time finding it, taxiing the plane into the line of delivered bombers whose next job is to fly over Europe with bombs in their bellies. Looking at that neat line last week, Sir Frederick had good reason to cock his eyebrows and be proud.