In one of my favorite books about the US Air Force in the WWII there is a chapter in which the author describes how the crew in the control tower “wished” the heavily loaded bombers into the air as the planes struggled to get airborne and clear a line of trees not far from the end of the runway.
A lot has happened since and it is rare indeed that tower controllers need to land a hand and “wish an aircraft into the air”. It looks though that this DC-10 of Arrow Cargo had needed all the help it could get. That runway is 3700 meters long…
