R.A.F. GROUND STAFF

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 136, 10 June 1940, Page 7

R.A.F. GROUND STAFF

THEIR OWN WAR CRY ;

"KEEP THE FANS TURNING"

(British Official Wireless.)

RUGBY, June 8,

The war cry of the R.A.F. ground staff is: "Keep the fans turning," and to such effect do they put their own injunction into practice that in the critical days on the Dunkirk beaches British fighter pilots flew more than 2,000,000 miles to and fro across the Channel.

Servicing the flights, the staff worked in shifts, day and night, refuelling, rearming, and doing repairs to great numbers of aircraft.

The ground staffs at any one station did not know hW many aircraft they might be called on to serve in any day. Sometimes one station receives only two squadrons, but the next day 100 or more aeroplanes might arrive, their pilots anxious to be off again. As soon as a squadron had landed from an engagement across the Channel and the pilots had tumbled out of the cockpits to make their reports, the ground staff took over and refilled, rearmed, and checked the aircraft against possible strain or damage. Wireless rriaintenance men checked up the sets, armourers went over the guns and put in fresh ammunition which other members of the ground staff had been working day and night to make up into belts which feed the eight machine-guns in each Hurricane and

Spitfire. lThe spirit of all ranks*was the same. Each had only one thought—to "Keep the fans turning"—to send out their pilots with the aircraft in perfect trim.

It is thin, among other things, that contributed to the feeling of superiority which shows in the combat reports of all R.A.F. fighter pilots. They are always ready for a fair fight, "that is, as one commanding officer said: "One British aircraft against three or four of the enemy." This confidence comes when the pilot knows tht he has not only a superior aircraft, but that-when he takes off it is in perfect trim.