[PeterVerney]

Did my flying on night fighters post war. It was always the practise to fill the tanks on landing. At first in Egypt on Mosquitos, we all wore "brothel creepers", suede shoes with about inch thick soft rubber soles. Then we converted onto the Meteor and soon discovered that when tanks were full during the cool night, when the sun got to them during the day they overflowed. To get into the aircraft one found oneself paddling in fuel and the shoes rapidly disintegrated!!!.
Recalling the Mosquito era, we did regular firing sorties of short duration and so refuelling did not take place until tanks had been run down, in order to shorten turn round times. One pilot found out the hard way that he should check his guages and ran out of fuel while over the air to air range on the North coast of Cyprus. he had to put it down on the beach, wrecked the aircraft, but walked away.