Technically this is a terrible picture. The aircraft is vibrating from the four engines at full throttle, it's about two stops underexposed and there's proabaly a trace of camera shake. But it's got a certain atmosphere about it, and maybe it's nostalgia but I like it. In colour it would have been nothing, but in black and white I think it's quite dramatic.
     I had finished duty in the early evening and was walking back to the groundcrew billets near the end of the runway when the pilot of the Lancaster brought all four Merlins up to full throttle and boost before releasing the brakes for take-off. The sound of four Merlins at full throttle fairly close up has to be heard to be believed. It almost makes the earth tremble, and it's a sound once heard never forgotten.
      It was a miserable evening with driving rain, but I was taken by the way the curving break in the cloud base was throwing the aircraft into semi-silhouette. It was in operational night bomber trim with all its guns and the underside painted black, though I doubt if it would have been carrying a bomb load - unless it was off on a bombing exercise against a canvas target stretched out in the North Sea, but it wasn't from my squadron, it was from the second squadron based on the same airfield. I had my Ranca with me so I stood in the shelter of the control caravan at the end of the runway, opened up the lens to its its full f/4.5 aperture, propped my shoulder against the side of the caravan and used as slow a shutter speed as I dare, about 1/10 sec..