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RUNWAY OF FLAMES - final aviation lecture for 2018 at the Metheringham Airfield Visitor Centre, Lincoln...

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Yellow belly
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Joined: Tue Aug 14, 2018 11:18 pm

RUNWAY OF FLAMES - final aviation lecture for 2018 at the Metheringham Airfield Visitor Centre, Lincoln...

Post by Yellow belly » Sat Oct 13, 2018 7:32 pm

Within about 15 minutes of the light-up order being given, a fog enshrouded airfield can be completely cleared of this greatest natural enemy of the airman. The miracle is performed by "Fido", another astonishing all-British achievement used during World War Two. In the early days of wartime experiment, when the experts prophesied failure, the code name "Fido" was derived from the initial letters of "Fog Investigation Dispersal Operations". When the apparatus proved a brilliant success, the RAF retained the code name and fitted it to "Fog Intensive Dispersal Of".

The first success was gained with it on the 4th November 1942, when in Hampshire a dense fog of 50 yards visibility was cleared by petroleum burners in an area about 200 yards square to a height of 80 feet. By January 1943 large-scale runways had been constructed for further experiments. These were on the same scale as actual operational runways and had the advantage of being available for experiments by day and night. On.19th November, 1943, Fido first came into operational use, when four Halifax bombers landed successfully after a bombing expedition to the Ruhr, through the surrounding visibility was only 100 yards; ten minutes after Fido had been lit the visibility on the runway increased to the equivalent of from two to four miles. Since that day more than 2,500 Allied aircraft have been safely landed - many of them in dense fog - with their crews of over 10,000 airmen.

Being that this will be the last aviation lecture of the season, Lincolnshire historian retired Group Captain Ian Hindle, has chosen a special illustrated topic called RUNWAY OF FLAMES depicting "FIDO" known as Fog Intensive Dispersal Operation. It reviews the requirement and necessity for the system, the history of development, and the implementation with special regard to RAF Metheringham, to include other RAF aerodromes which used it in the Bomber County of Lincolnshire.

After being commissioned into the Royal Air Force in 1966, Ian served in Armed Forces hospitals in Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Germany and the Middle East in both peacetime and conflict situations. Following the closure of the military hospitals in 1996, he took premature retirement from the RAF on appointment as Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at Manchester University. but finally retired in August 2001. Since retirement, Ian has been a magistrate on the Lincolnshire Bench, a Non-Executive Director of the United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust and Chairman of the Lincolnshire & Nottinghamshire Air Ambulance Charity Trust for seven years. He is currently is a Trustee of the Bromhead Medical Charity, the Lincolnshire Institute for Cancer Research and the Friends of Metheringham Airfield..

It will be held in the WW2 gymnasium, now known as the Peter Scoley Hall, on Wednesday, 24th October 2018, beginning at 7.30pm: Admission is £5.00 for non members to include refreshments. It is free to members of Friends of Metheringham Airfield and veterans of 106 Squadron.
***You may like to hear chatter going on between a Lancaster bomber aircrew recorded as it was here on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoRVStgnTa8 ***

For further information please telephone 07486 947 095

John Shipton
Friends of Metheringham Airfield
Lincoln
War time home to 106 Squadron

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