I read something interesting somewhere and I wanted to know if there was any truth to it.
I read that airmen flying Bomber missions in WWII often didn't know when they'd be sent out on a dangerous mission. The first sign most of them had that today was the day they'd be dicing with death again was when they came down to the mess and and got served bacon and/or real eggs. Apparently since these were rationed they were only given to the airmen who were about to fly over Germany.
Does anyone know if this is true, and do you have any other details of pre-mission routines, briefings or rituals airmen got up to before flying out to what may well be their death?
To quote from Nickels and Nightingales, a memoir from Jack Watts, a Bomber Command Observer:
"Those pre-operational and post-operational meals became very much of a pattern in Bomber Command as well as being somewhat of a privilege. In the tightly rationed wartime economy, food had assumed a place of considerable importance in everyone's minds. Eggs were a rationed rarity and yet the practice of providing a fried egg meal for every air crew member before and after each operation was religiously preserved throughout the war. In fact, it was so much a part of the pattern to which crews became accustomed that it became a ritual. To have broken with this pattern might have had serious repercussions because of the superstitious and fatalistic attitude which seemed to have become an integral part of each airman's character the longer he survived in that lonely aand costly form of warfare. It was at the post operational meals, in the early morning hours when you were tired, if not emotionally exhausted, when your defences were eroded, that the absence of those who failed to return was talked about."
(p88)
However, his account suggests that airmen were briefed about the mission before a meal, no not quite as dramatic as a meal meaning a mission that day.