Bomber Command Memorial

[Otter]

Never knew where the bits came from for the roof, how appropriate:

Liam O'Connor designed the memorial, built of Portland stone, which features a bronze 9-foot (2.7 m) sculpture of seven aircrew, designed by the sculptor Philip Jackson to look as though they have just returned from a bombing mission and left their aircraft.[3]

Aluminium from a Royal Canadian Air Force Handley Page Halifax of No. 426 Squadron RCAF that had crashed in Belgium in May 1944 was used to build the roof of the memorial, which was designed to evoke the styling of the Vickers Wellington. The Halifax had been removed from a swamp in 1997 with three of the crew found still at their posts. They were buried with full military honours in Geraardsbergen and the remains of the aircraft were sent to Canada. Some of the metal was used for the restoration of a Halifax in Ontario, and the rest was melted down by the Bomber Command Museum of Canada. The Museum provided ingots for the memorial to commemorate the 10,000 of 55,573 Bomber Command aircrew killed during the war that were Canadian.

[Spitfire]

On my way back home from DX - I went through London just to see the monument.The roof can be seen on this pic. A most impressive monument and especially the sculpture is very touching in all it's details.

[B-24J]

The unveiling looks amazing. A perfect day.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti....html?ITO=1490

If the crew depicted in the monument have just returned from an OP, I'd expect to see a few cigarettes being lit!

I like the Irvin jackets and trousers on the crew.

John

[Treetopflyer]

What a stunning and impressive memorial. Thanks for posting.

[Story]

The remains of five British airmen who crashed in Germany during World War II have been discovered near Mannheim, researchers announced on Friday. Their bomber went down with seven men aboard during a raid on a Czech arms factory in April 1943. German soldiers recovered two of the bodies from the wreckage shortly thereafter, but five of the Royal Air Force members remained missing until last week. The British Air Ministry, which conducted an exhaustive search for the men after the war, had concluded that they likely ditched in the sea.

http://www.history.com/news/lost-wor...bref=obnetwork

[the hairy bloke]

A thought that has been wandering through my head of late is this; What where the feelings of German bomber crews (no less brave than their US & UK counterparts) as German cities were bombed.

It was known that the British included revenge as one of their reasons for doing this.

[Edward]

A thought that has been wandering through my head of late is this; What where the feelings of German bomber crews (no less brave than their US & UK counterparts) as German cities were bombed.

It was known that the British included revenge as one of their reasons for doing this.

It's certainly true that the targeting of civilians in Dresden was part revenge (at the same time as demonising the Luftwaffe for the Blitz), and partly designed to erode support for the Nazi regime by destroying home front morale. This is, of course, why Bomber Harris' memorial statue was controversial when it was put up back at the turn of the nineties (I also understand it to have been why he was not the recipient of a royal honour such as a KBE). The same consideration is the reason why this monument (unfairly, in my book, though that would be based to some extent on the Nuremberg defence, as we lawyers call it) took so many years to happen.

As to how bomber crews felt about it.... The only one I ever knew personally was my primary school headmaster who had served in a bomber crew during the war. The reason he went into education after the war ended was because he said every time he pulled the lever for the bomb doors, he thought of particularly the children that would be killed by the bombs he dropped. Becoming a teacher was his way of doing something positive for children. A form of atonement, I suppose. I'm sure many others felt the same, both allied and Luftwaffe.

Any of those boys on either side who went out in a bomber plane (especially the rear gunners sitting in a glass bubble with nothing else around them) were either among the bravest men to ever walk the earth, or utter nutcases. Genuinely horrific concept.

[alsendk]

Every year I am participating in the biggest Traditional jazz festival in Europe, taking place in Dresden.
I have been playing there even before the `mauerfall` in...was it 88?
and I have seen the rebuillding of the churches and buildings take place in a rapid speed, with money, from westGermany, but also donations from USA just to name one.
But though Dresden is a beautiful city today, it is totally different from the city it was before the massive bombing during the ww2.
My daddy was there with the danish brigade just month after the capitulation, to help building temporary bridges and clearing the infrastructure.
He wrote back to my mom, that when kneeling down on his knees, he could overlook the whole city...a wild exaggeration of course, but the pictures he took with his Agfa click box camera, showed a totally devastated Dresden.
Of course it was a payback for the bombings of London, as well as the a-bomb dropping over Japan was an opportunity to try stop the endless war with the japanese, and perhaps also a payback for starting the war against US by bombing Pearl Harbour.
This is what happens when war is on. Afterwards it all seem so cruel and meaningless.

[the hairy bloke]

Edward: You didn't say what nationality your teacher was. As if that makes a difference, which it doesn't.

I wondered how someone who had partici[pated in the "Coventrising" (if that's the right word) would feel when the boot might be seen to be on the other foot.

[Edward]

Edward: You didn't say what nationality your teacher was. As if that makes a difference, which it doesn't.

Irish, though a native of the Six Counties that remained part of the UK after 1921. Family were all in the Larne and Ballymena area when the Luftwaffe bombed Belfast (Larne would also have been a target as a significant commercial port for supplies going on the boat to Scotland, though the main target in the 'Belfast Blitz' was the shipyards at Harland & Wolf, obviously). Bit of relief work, but none of them were actually military. I have significantly less of a personal connection to the war than would be normal over here (not least as conscription was never extended to Northern Ireland - for very obvious reasons). They were hit by rationing and the usual, though much less exposed to a serious threat of invasion than would have been folks in England, that sort of thing. My headmaster and two of the old boys from our church (one RAF, flew a Spitfire in the BoB, the other a Dublin boy who had joined the British Navy for a career) were the only folks I knew that were directly involved.

I wondered how someone who had participated in the "Coventrising" (if that's the right word) would feel when the boot might be seen to be on the other foot.

Must have been some who did question what they did when they were on the receiving end (must have been at least some of the Luftwaffe boys were from Dresden). I'd have assumed maybe that sot of thing would be more common among conscripts, though in more modern times I've seen interviews with former professional, career soldiers who found one flash of a humanising contact like that, seeing it from the other side, left them unable to carry on. It's hard to imagine what it must have been like to have things so dehumanised that it became possible to do things that were done without that sort of realisation until it came back on you on a personal level, but I suppose a combination of a propaganda machine like Goebbels had and natural human coping mechanisms will do odd things to people.