Buzzcut

This plane - probably as it turns out a Hercules MC130J from the 352nd Special Operations Group at RAF Mildenhall - has been low flying along the cliffs today - with at least 8 passes. Eventually I got in the car and drove up to the clifftop with camera, ran through Windmill Down and the beast emerged on cue.

I waited for a few more passes as the surprisingly stealthy turbo-prop careened into view. On solitary duty I didn't see a chap walk up behind me. Turns out he was from the Charles Voysey 'bungalow' just up the way. His wife owns it and he lives in Tennessee. But he said his Dad used to watch the Battle of Britain from the clifftop and would recall that each morning a Messerschmitt would roar towards the cliff low over the water before pulling into a spectacular climb - as a way of saluting the watcher - before banking over Dover and shooting up the barrage balloons. Day after day apparently.

Anyway I've tweeted RAF Mildenhall to see what was going on. And on closer inspection of my many photos I noticed that four people were sitting at the open cargo door (see other pic). Were they  sightseeing, I wonder? It being VE Day?

I've finally pulled that page on Russian PoWs in Arctic Norway together. It's a bit gruesome but tries to record (not uniquely it must be said) the terrible events in a forgotten corner of Norway  in 1944-5. Compared to the total death toll of Russian PoWs (3.3m) and the total Russian deaths in WWII (25m) it is small beer. But it felt important.