Finding the proof
WHAT EXACTLY IS PROOF?
In researching this Guide I have since learnt one hell of a lot about aspects about UK aviation history which I had not envisaged. For example I had no idea about the often atrocious living conditions many WW2 bomber crews suffered, simply because the 'top brass' considered them as being expendable as most wouldn't last long serving as bomber crew. The average life expectancy on operations (some claim) was about two weeks! When looking at a memorial placed outside a WW2 airfield, (which I thoroughly applaud of course), these obviously cannot give any indication of how those aircrews felt embarking on their missions, or how they lived. And indeed, some lived in quite splendid quarters. But, given the constraints of producing a 'Guide' very little of this history can be told. By and large the only 'proof' of a WW2 flying site existing in this Guide is just rudimentary information. Layout of runways etc - not much of a legacy for those who served there. This said, I have tried to redress this in my 'Notes'. And, at this level, for this Guide, the 'proof' that this flying site existed is very easy to establish.
OTHER FLYING SITES, NOT SO EASY TO LOCATE
I soon learnt a lot about what we generally consider to be proof. For example, the sort of proof required by a Court of Law in this country. To really 'prove' a case was often woefully inadequate in many cases and I soon sought to seek much higher standards. If forced to give it a name I'd call it 'The Time Allowed Standard'. The more time allowed to investigate the claim, the better the proof - but only in some cases. Even after two years research, let alone the fiteen plus years actually involved, I soon discovered that much of what I'd readily and eagerly assumed to be 'fact' on reading about our aviation history at the start of this 'quest' was in fact, quite often, utter garbage. This was, to say the least, quite a revelation!
I had no idea just how many people had quite cynically produced so many books regarding aviation history in a quite arbitrary way simply to earn a few quid without any recourse to doing some basic research at all! I sincerely hope you will trust me when I say that I have spent all these years in serious research, plus nigh on a lifetime being interested in aviation history, to produce this Guide. Given another hundred years to do it, I reckon it could be a pretty good job! But still nothing to brag about. For me of course, in the humble quest of trying to record the places from which these often momentous aviation events took place, is a privilege quite frankly. Find the place and usually the people and events flood in.
FORGET ABOUT PROOF, WHAT IS THE TRUTH OF THE MATTER?
The truth is much harder to ascertain? For example I now strongly suspect that if you interviewed every member of some two thousand personnel based at a typical RAF station, or nigh on three thousand US personnel at a USAAF base in WW2, I can now pretty much guarantee you'll get a different account from nigh on each person about what was "actually" going on. Each account probably varying considerably depending on the rank they held? I now realise that exactly the same set of circumstances applies to accounts given by people working at civilian aerodromes and airports,
All I required, mostly, were some basic details, but even these vary. I had supposed that the military keep very strict accounts, but it now seems even these are often flawed. In the civil arena of aviation history it often gets much more difficult. At times I had to bear in mind that all I was searching for was proof that a certain area of land, (sometimes water), was once used, or is still used, for mostly regular flying activity over a certain period in time. Obviously taking into account other singular 'one-off' flying sites for all sorts of reasons. Such were the variations of information available it has often sometimes seemed an almost hopeless task. Being a pilot myself this struck me as being very odd, I'd always imagined aviation as being very tightly regulated, and with heaps of supporting and accurate documentary evidence. Documents abound but I soon learnt you can't trust them. Even flight guides on sale to pilots at the beginning of the 21st century contain many basic errors.
