BBC2 28th June 5.00pm. Bomber Command. A Tribute

BBC2 Thursday 28th June 5.00pm

Bomber Command. A Tribute.
The Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park, Central London will be dedicated in the presence of HM The Queen on 28th June. No doubt there will be ongoing news updates on various 24 hour news channels during the day. There will also be a BBC2 programme “Bomber Command. A Tribute” televised at 5 o’clock that afternoon, repeated at 11.20pm that night.

The Memorial to the 55,573 members of Bomber Command who gave their lives during WW2 is located in the north-west corner of Green Park, at the Hyde Park Corner end and almost directly opposite The RAF Club on Piccadilly.

It’s a sad fact that the President of the Memorial Fund, Mr Robin Gibb passed away recently before he could see his work finally come to fruition.

 

Thanks for the heads up Brian ... :thumb:

 

When the statue of Sir Arthur Harris was unveiled outside St. Clement Danes in The Strand there was a small demonstration which was calling Bomber Command “murderers” and “war criminals”.

Their misguided views were based on the results of the horrific raids later in the war against Dresden in particular.
What must be realised was that up until London was bombed for the first time in September 1940, albeit by mistake or so the story goes, the RAF Bomber Command were ordered not to attack civilian targets and where the was a risk of civilian casualties the raid should be aborted. Unfortunately that raid on London led inexorably to retaliation and escalation.

As Winston Churchill said “We didn’t ask for this war, we didn’t want this war; but now that we are at war we shall make war to the best of our ability until we are victorious.”

During and after the blitz on British cities, and right up until D-Day the only way that Britain could carry the fight to Germany was by the air war, and for the large part of the time, targets of “military significance” were attacked. However there was one major problem which was discovered by experience, that of navigation and bombing accuracy. In modern parlance, collateral damage could not be avoided. It wasn’t until very much later in the war that the sort of accurate bombing to which we have all become accustomed to in the news these days was available, and then only by a small number of very special squadrons, such as the H2S radar equipped Pathfinder force who were able to mark targets for the main bomber stream.

I’m sure that in “Bomber” Harris’s mind sending 1000+ aircraft on one raid was more about showing the German forces that Britain could put that many bombers in the air, rather than the damage which was likely to be done, and just to prove that it wasn’t a “one-off” the thousand bomber raids were staged at irregular intervals.
Some historians have postulated that during the Blitz the Luftwaffe showed Harris what to do and Harris then set about showing the Luftwaffe how to do it.

Germany also adopted to a greater or lesser degree what is now called “human shields”, that is they placed many of their war manufacturing in city centres and built up densely populated areas; the Focke-Wulf FW190 assembly line and repair facility was at Tempelhof, in the middle of Berlin.

During the immediate run-up to D-Day, Bomber Command was under the direct command of Supreme Allied Headquarters; their main jobs being to soften up the defences of Northern France, disrupt road, rail and telephone communications and bomb some areas to provide distractions away from Normandy.
Following the Battle of Normandy, Bomber Command was returned to British command to continue the campaign against, in particular the German oil industry, ship and u-boat yards and other military targets.

The bombing of Dresden was demanded by Stalin, ostensibly to prevent German troops withdrawing from Russia actually returning to Germany. Harris was ordered to carry out the raid by Churchill, who apparently washed his hand of the raid and left Harris to take the “flak”.

Let the detractors, protesters and nay-sayers remember the blitz on London, Coventry, Cardiff, Plymouth, Swansea, Birmingham, Manchester, Hull (the “northern coastal town”), Liverpool and so many other cities and towns who felt the full weight of the Luftwaffe during those dark days.

Whatever the real history of Bomber Command, let us not forget that 55,573; more than half of the 120,000 brave volunteers gave their lives in defence of their country and also in defence of our freedom to question history and our leaders; it’s called “freedom of speech”.