My family was stationed near London for a time. My father told me later that once an airline pilot mistook a WW2 strip for the Heathrow runway (!) and landed there, using every inch of it to get it to stop. The strip was too short to take off from, so what to do?

They stripped everything off the airplane they could. Seats, interiors, galleys, everything. They put in just enough fuel to hop over the trees to Heathrow. He said they did it, but barely.