Fighting the cold
'It was freezing! The aircraft used to ice up. We had leaflets to drop and if you cut the pack and touched the knife to your skin it would stick.
Greg Gregson
During World War Two, while the Spitfires and Hurricanes of RAF Fighter Command defended the United Kingdom against German aerial attacks, RAF Bomber Command’s role was to attack the enemy's own military strength - by bombing their airbases, shipping, troops, communications and all industries used in the Nazi war effort. A strategy which was pivotal in our victory, as leading German generals testified: Allied air power was the greatest single reason for German defeat.”
After the British Army’s retreat across the Channel from Dunkirk in 1940, until D-day in 1944, Britain and her allies had no way of hitting back at the Germans, who had invaded most of Europe, other than by long-range bombing.
The vital task of bombing Germany fell to RAF aircrews with an average age of just 22. The youngest were scarcely 18 yet they faced some of the most terrifying combat conditions of WW2.
The reasons for bombing Germany were to disrupt industrial production of weapons, to wear down the German people’s morale and to force the German Army and Air Force (the Luftwaffe) into having to defend against the bombing over a wide area. Repeated attacks on the German homeland also caused the diversion of industrial war production to defensive, rather than offensive weapons and equipment. Forcing the Germans onto the defensive was a critical factor in the liberation of Europe and the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945.
It came at a price
The airmen of Bomber Command, who were drawn from all over Britain, the Commonwealth and Allied countries, faced more deadly odds than any other branch of the armed forces during the war.
Of the 125,000 men, all of them volunteers, 55,573 lost their lives in the fight for freedom against tyranny. Yet almost every day these young men put their lives on the line, even though out of every 100 who began an operational tour of 30 missions, just 27 would complete it, the rest being killed, captured or invalided.
