The sickening vandals who attacked an RAF memorial know nothing of Bomber Command’s bravery and sacrifice
LOATHSOME vandals who this week desecrated the RAF Bomber Command monument in London shame our country and its proud past.
Not only should they be jailed for this act of vandalism, they need a history lesson on what the incredibly brave young men of Bomber Command did for the freedom these criminals have so disgustingly abused.
In their thousands, these pilots and aircrew — most of them barely out of school — gave their lives so we could, for example, be free to protest.
To the twisted minds of hand-wringing “woke” protestors, who are so horrified by our history that they constantly rewrite it, the politicians and statesmen who built and defended the British Empire are to be vilified.
We have seen attacks on the statues of colonialist Cecil Rhodes and slave owner Christopher Codrington. Even memorials to our great Prime Ministers Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher have been targeted.
Attacking MPs for policies is one thing. Vandalising their statues is a witless, futile form of protest.
The vandals who covered the Bomber Command memorial in white paint are on the wrong side of both logic and history.
These men were largely civilian volunteers, the vast majority in their late teens or early twenties. Only a quarter were officers.
Over the course of the war, around half of the aircrew were killed on operations, more than 8,000 were wounded in action and nearly 10,000 became prisoners of war.
Many of today’s younger generation have benefited from higher education.
That they can be so absurdly narrow-minded is bewildering.
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Their view of history, through today’s prism of shame for any action the British might have taken that could have caused any minor upset, is downright stupid.
Disturbingly, research by the Campaign For Real Education shows this rewriting of history is common-place in our schools, with pupils encouraged to explore themes where people have been mistreated by certain events in Britain’s history.
The bravery of Bomber Command — including my great-uncle Alan Roberts, who won the Distinguished Flying Cross and Bar — in facing German fighters and anti-aircraft fire night after night, hundreds of miles over enemy territory, simply cannot be overestimated.
These were young men following orders. Whether they agreed with, hated or were petrified by what they were doing, they did it for their country.
Flying was physically and mentally demanding, and constant concentration was needed for hours at a time. As well as fighting the enemy, airmen had to combat hostile weather, lack of oxygen and frostbite.
STRIKE BACK
Lower pressures at high altitude meant that they needed equipment to keep them warm and for breathing. So much for the snowflakes of today. If the fatigue did not get you, the fear might.
Up to 6,500 men suffered serious disorders from combat stress.
Often, when men shared their anxiety, they were branded LMFs — for their “lack of moral fibre”.
But their bravery was exemplary — no fewer than 23 Victoria Crosses were awarded to bomber crew.
Part of the reason that Germany is such a peace-loving country today — shorn of the violent aggression that had led to five wars of expansion in 75 years — is because of what happened to the country at the hands of the heroes of Bomber Command.
Following the evacuation of the British Army from the beaches of Dunkirk in June 1940, until their return to the beaches of Normandy four years and three days later, the only way that Britain could strike back at Nazi Germany in Western Europe was through Bomber Command.
During the Blitz, in which the Luftwaffe killed more than 50,000 British civilians, Winston Churchill was determined that Britain should be seen to be fighting back.
When war broke out in 1939, Bomber Command had just 33 squadrons with 480 aircraft.
For the first three years it was hampered by the relative ineffectiveness of the Blenheim, Wellington, Whitley and Hampden bombers that it flew, increasingly at night and with unreliable navigational and radio equipment.
Everything changed in 1942 with the appointment of Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris as its Commander-in-Chief — one of the principal architects of the Allied victory over Germany.
UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER
He believed Germany’s morale could be broken and its capacity for waging war wrecked by systematic destruction of its industrial base, production facilities and city centres.
It was a ruthless policy, but one needed in a Total War in which defeat meant utter subjugation.
From 1942 onwards, Bomber Command had a new generation of four-engined heavy bombers.
Harris created the legendary Pathfinder Force — elite crews which from August 1942 identified targets ahead of the main bombing forces.
And he introduced massive 1,000-bomber raids, the first of which struck Cologne on the night of May 31, 1943.
From then until February 1944, saturation bombing of the Ruhr and Hamburg suddenly brought the growth in German armaments production — which had been an average of 5.5 per cent a month since February 1942 — crashing down to, at times, nil.
Hitler’s armaments minister, Albert Speer, and propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, acknowledged privately that the bombing campaign crippled Germany’s chances of fighting back.
Around half a million Germans lost their lives as a result of the 955,044 tons of bombs that were dropped by the Allies during the war.
Yet the campaign, which was also carried out in large measure by the US Eighth Air Force, was very costly indeed in terms of Allied lives — with 57,861 killed in Bomber Command alone.
Adam Tooze, a leading expert on the Nazi economy, records: “The disruption caused by British and US bombing halted Speer’s armaments miracle in its tracks. The German home front was rocked by a serious crisis of morale. By July 1943 the war was obviously lost.”
As well as high-profile actions such as the Dambusters Raid on the Mohne and Eder dams, it is sometimes forgotten that Bomber Command was also responsible for nearly a third of all enemy shipping sunk in European waters.
But it was one raid in particular — on Dresden on February 13, 1945, where between 25,000 and 40,000 Germans lost their lives — that has concentrated criticism on Bomber Harris’s strategy for victory.
Author Frederick Taylor, who wrote about the controversial British bombing blitz, argues: “Dresden was one heavy raid among a whole deadly sequence of massive raids. But for various unpredictable reasons — wind, weather, lack of defences and, above all, shocking deficiencies in air-raid protection for the general population — it suffered the worst.”
The respected German historian Gotz Bergander adds that before Dresden the concept of accepting unconditional surrender was unthinkable to ordinary Germans.
LEST WE FORGET...
- 346,514 sorties were flown during WW2
- 55,573 crew were killed, out of 125,000
- Most flyers were in their late teens or early 20s
- Crews were largely civilian volunteers and only a quarter were officers
- Up to 6,500 men suffered serious disorders from combat stress
- Almost 10,000 flyers became prisoners of war
MOST READ IN OPINION
The effect on home morale of the campaign was hugely important — after years of “taking it”, Britons saw vast formations of bombers flying over to Germany to “give it back”.
The unsung heroes of Bomber Command paved the way for Hitler’s defeat, bringing peace to Europe that has lasted 75 years. What would these heroic men have thought of people scattering paint on a statue?
It is wrong, stupid and a terrible insult to their families, their legacies — and their country.
- Andrew Roberts is a historian and author of Churchill: Walking With Destiny (published by Penguin).
SERGEANT DOWNED IN RAID
SERGEANT John Martin was a 21-year-old radio operator in a Lancaster bomber when he was shot down in a raid over Berlin on January 30, 1944.
He was thrown clear as the plane disintegrated, killing four of his crew mates.
John, now 96, from Tanygroes, Ceredigion, was interrogated by the SS as a spy and sent to three prisoner of war camps. After telling his story on BBC1’s The One Show, he went on to write a book called A Raid Over Berlin. John says:
“ I think Bomber Command has been harshly criticised – very much so.
“I don’t think it was ever appreciated.
“I don’t know where it came from but they were treated almost like criminals after Dresden, which was ridiculous.
“Why shouldn’t Dresden be bombed? They bombed our cities and it just wasn’t wanton bombing – Dresden was a great railway centre, it was a great military centre, a manufacturing area.
“Why shouldn’t it be bombed? What did they expect? That it was going to be protected all the way through the war?
“Just ask yourself where you would be today without Bomber Command? At best you would be cleaning some German’s boots.
“Make no doubt about it, they had planned that the whole of Britain would be working for the good of Germany.”
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