The Sun offers a £5,000 reward to anyone who helps catch the yobs who vandalised RAF Second World War memorial
The Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park, central London, has been vandalised four times since it was opened by the Queen in 2012
POLICE are hunting yobs who daubed white paint over a memorial to the 55,573 members of RAF Bomber Command who died in World War Two.
Squadron leader Johnny Johnson, 97 — last survivor of the 1943 Dambusters Raid — said: “What a disgrace.
£5,000 reward
THE Sun is today offering a £5,000 reward for any information leading to the arrest of those responsible for this vandalism.
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The Sun is now offering a £5,000 reward to anyone who helps catch the yobs who carried out the vandalism.
Squadron leader Johnny Johnson, 97 — last survivor of the 1943 Dambusters Raid — said: “What a disgrace.
“How disrespectful to those who gave their lives so that these thugs could have their freedom.”
The bronze statue of an air crew housed in London’s Green Park was targeted on Sunday night.
David Murray, chief executive of the RAF Benevolent Fund which looks after the memorial, said: “It is utterly heart-breaking to see the memory of those brave airmen disrespected in this way.”
Former RAF Navigator and historian John Nichol said: “It’s vile and mindless.”
Wreaths and a photograph of airman Stanley Forsyth, who died recently aged 98, were also splattered.
The nearby Canada Memorial, which commemorates soldiers who fell in both world wars, was also attacked.
Half of all airmen lost their lives fighting the Nazis
The RAF Bomber Command was founded in 1936 to act as a deterrent against aerial attacks but the outbreak of war three years later saw it thrust to the frontline of the fight against Nazi Germany.
Bomber Command crews suffered tragically high casualty rates - with almost one in two losing their lives.
Of 125,000 recruits, more than 55,500 were killed, another 8,400 were injured and nearly 10,000 became prisoners of war.
The airmen showed incredible courage, often flying at night against a gauntlet of German fighters and anti-aircraft fire.
In the closing months of the war, operations shuch as the raid on Dresden in February 1945 saw the city destroyed and thousands of civilians killed.
The attacks had a devastating effect on the German war effort and helped bring about victory for the allied forces.
So was a statue of wartime leaders Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt in New Bond Street, and the Royal Marines memorial in The Mall.
Sunday was the fourth time the £7million RAF monument has been defaced since it was unveiled by the Queen in 2012.
Bomber Command had been denied a dedicated memorial for many years because of the controversial raids on the German city of Dresden in 1945.
The memorial was attacked by thugs who daubed 'Islam' in red graffiti in May 2013.
The vandalism came just days after Fusilier Lee Rigby had been murdered on the streets of Woolwich, South East London.
The damage took around £7,000 to repair.
Andrew Patterson, 31, later pleaded guilty to vandalising the memorial.
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Just a week after Patterson's graffiti, the Bomber Command memorial was vandalised for a second time by Daniel Smith, from Salford.
Smith was jailed for 12 weeks in November last year for writing "Lee Rigby's killers should hang" and "EDL" on the memorial.
The memorial was vandalised again in 2017 when the word 'Jesus' was spray-painted in metre-high blue letters on the exterior pillars.
