After 70 years, memorial to bombers who fought for Europe

Today the Queen will be involved in another ceremony redolent with the past. After last month’s Diamond Jubilee, and Wednesday’s handshake with Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein, she will unveil a memorial to the 55,573 men who died during world war two serving in Bomber Command.

If any group of WWII servicemen deserve a concrete reminder of their sacrifice, it is the airmen who fought above Europe between 1939-1945. The rate of attrition was sickening.

The near 56,000 dead amounts to a death rate of 44.4 per cent. On top of this over 8,000 were injured and a further 9,000 ended up as prisoners of war. You had a better chance of survival as an infantry officer in the trenches of world war one than in a bomber during WWII.

By 1943 only one of six were surviving a tour of 30 operations. One in 40 survived their second. On any sortie of 20 planes, one would not come back.

To put this in a modern context, in Afghanistan 419 British forces personnel or MoD civilians have died – 379 as a result of enemy action. This is over a longer period than WWII. Other than the grief suffered by each individual family, there is no comparison.

The RAF Bomber Command Memorial is in Green Park, central London, because the city owes so much to the pilots who died. It is made of Portland stone with a bronze sculpture of an aircrew at its’ heart. The memorial is open to the sky.

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The memorial’s connection with airmen is physical as well as symbolic. The roof will contain aluminium from a Halifax bomber shot down over Belgium in 1944. The plane was excavated from a swamp in 1997 – three of the crew were found still at their stations.

No doubt the 70-year delay has a lot to do with the casualties inflicted by the men of bomber command.

In German cities between 300,000 and 600,000 died. In the raids on Dresden in 1945, the consensus appears to be that 25,000 civilians lost their lives. The questionable morality of carpet bombing seems to have prevented a fitting tribute to young men following orders.

Alan Biffen is an 87-year-old veteran attending the unveiling. He has written: “Sometimes I look back and wonder ‘did it all really happen?’. He lied about his age, pretending to be 16 so he could sign up.

Statistically he should not have survived the war, let alone the 20th century. And of course today he will not be joined by 55,573 of his comrades.