| I had the pleasure of ‘working’ the B-24 as a controller when she was Diamond ‘Lil. She trundled over to the UK for the 50th anniversary of the arrival/formation of the Mighty Eighth in 1992 (was it THAT long ago?) at RAF Honington in Suffolk. We were ‘invited’ by the powers-that-be to hold an Air Display to celebrate the event, despite the fact that RAF Mildenhall 8 miles down the road held a rather large (!) annual event anyway and this would be within 2 weeks of our ‘date’.
More importantly, Honington is not well served by road access and we anticipated major traffic problems when ‘the word’ got out and the Public got to hear; how right we were! We were delighted (and horrified!) to see various ex-8th AF guys arrive in their Winnebago’s (sic) from the States 2 DAYS before the event and camp outside! That’s when we know were going to have some logistical problems; if the Jungle Telegraph was working that effectively to the US of A, then we were going to be inundated by UK ‘Anoraks’! And so it proved.
Despite not having any sort of previous Unit Air Display Plan to dust off or warm-over, the day was absolutely great. P-51s, a newly refurbished P-38 flown by the late ‘Hoof’ Proudfoot, Sally B of course, C-47, BBMF and sundry modern day hardware made for a really good time with a flying programme that lasted 4-5 hrs. Only a P-47 was missing to make up the 8th’sWarbird set.
Unfortunately, Diamond ‘Lil went unserviceable at the moment critique and couldn’t appear, much to everyone’s disappointment. However, she spent the rest of the summer providing ‘air experience’ flights around the UK especially in East Anglia and that’s when I got to work her; funny how she always got routed to overfly the airfield…... Lovely sight, wonderful sound. | 
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