the tail gunner, and his job is arguably the most dangerous, and certainly the coldest, the most lonely and isolated, of any Lancaster crewman. His parachute was stowed outside the armoured doors that shut him in a cold cramped position until the end of the mission, his only human contact was that of the disembodied voices of other crew members over the intercom. He was here for how many hours the mission took. The call to bale out was ‘Abracadabra Jump, Jump! Abracadabra Jump, Jump!’. It sounded silly, but it had one advantage. It couldn’t have possibly been misunderstood. Nevertheless, it was often not used, and the order was given in plain language. On hearing the command to bale out, the rear gunner opened his armoured doors at the rear of his turret, reached back for his parachute and cliped it onto his chest harness. He swiveled his turret right round until the open doors were facing outwards, then did a backward roll out into the night sky above a hostile country. This was of course presupposing that his parachute had not been burnt or shot to pieces, that he was still able to turn his turret to the escape position, and that the centrifugal forces exerted by his out-of-control bomber would have allowed him to make these necessary moves.