Another Insult to Bomber Command

[The B Word]

Just seen the pictures of the new 'Memorial Spire' for Bomber Command's 55,000 unveiled at Lincoln yesterday :yuk:

What is it with this modern-art fetish for rusty steel - it looks like it needs a good dose of Hamerrite! Also, the cost of the memorial on the site is an eye-watering £10.5 MIILLION, which is nearly twice the cost of the far more tasteful Bomber Command memorial outside the RAF Club in Piccadilly.

Can we please stop with the "Emporer's new clothes" style of modern art to commemorate past generations' sacrifices? I know that my Grandfather and his chums would not appreciate such gooping fru-fru like this rusty metal wharehouse chimney that's been imstalled atop Canwick Hill in Lincoln.

Absolute garbage...:yuk:...and an insult to 'the many' of Bomber Command :=

The B Word

http://news.images.itv.com/image/file/784798/stream_img.jpg

[NutLoose]

It is 102ft (31.09m) tall - the wingspan of the Avro Lancaster - and the width at the base is 16ft (5m), the overall width of a Lancaster wing.


I quite like it, and it saves on paint.

[The B Word]

It will have rusted away within 30 years! :ugh:

[thing]

I dunno, you can see it being as it's pointy and perched atop Canwick hill from a lot of places in Lincoln. I was on the castle walls the other day and it stands out very well. Tourists were asking what the pointy thing was they could see, so then they get to find out about the memorial, which then might trigger a desire to visit other aviation history related sites in Lincs. Were it a statue like the one in London you would actually have to go and see it to see it if you get my drift.

I'm not particularly a lover of stuff moderne either but I think in this case they have the right thing in the right place.

[camelspyyder]

At least people are now making an effort to honour Bomber Command.

The 55573 casualties deserve that (far more than some arse on here bitching about the design of the memorial)

[NutLoose]

It's also not £10 mil for the Spire, but for everything

International Bomber Command Centre (http://www.internationalbcc.co.uk/?cookieComplianceCheck=1)

At the heart of the International Bomber Command Centre are the Memorial Spire and Walls of Names. Designed by Stephen Palmer of Place Architecture, the Spire is formed of two wing fragments, tapering as they rise towards the sky, separated by perforated supporting plates which make reference to lightweight wing structures. Sitting on the edge of Lincoln's South escarpment the spire form echoes the Cathedral on the North escarpment, as well as the church spires that are a familiar form in the Lincolnshire landscape. The Spire is placed and orientated to turn visitors arriving from the Memorial Avenue and Chadwick Centre towards the Cathedral, creating a sense of being inside a virtual wing as the Cathedral is revealed across the valley.

Made using Corten weathering steel, the memorial is 102ft (31.09m) high, the wingspan of the iconic Avro Lancaster bomber, and the width at the base is 16ft (5m), the width of a Lancaster wing.

[The B Word]

But they could have saved money with any number of these :E

http://www.poujoulat.com/images/produits/source/ST-Inox_Inox/Finitions_sortie-de-toit_Inox_Inox.gif

I just don't think it is a fitting tribute to sit on the hill. A backlit 2D silhoette of a bomber and its crews or a more traditional statue would be better. This to me is just modern art garbage. :yuk:

The final insult...

B Word

[The B Word]

Nutty

The building that if you look through a pair of socks over your head is supposed to look like a Lancaster Bomber - oh, purlease! That really is Emporer's New Clothes and belongs with the other sh!te made up by Emin, Hockney and Hirst...

IMHO of course! :ok:

[Brian W May]

Got to agree with B Word - it looks like shyte . . .

[Wensleydale]

Actually, it fits well into the local surroundings. It is visible from a distance without being ostentatious. I too was sceptical about it initially, but now it has a permanence about it which seems to suit. Sorry B Word - must disagree with you on this point.

[Bing]

This to me is just modern art garbage.

An opinion shared by the regime they were bombing...

[Tankertrashnav]

I quite like it (and I also like the Bomber Command memorial in Green Park)

I expect somebody hated Stonehenge when they put it up (load of modern art rubbish, all those stones spoiling the view ;))

Interesting looking at the photos that the Czechs are still using the same type of pilots "wings" (badge worn on the left breast pocket of the chap in the centre)) Good to see that representatives of the allied air forces were invited.

[AtomKraft]

I think it's utter crap.

Why not make something with a more identifiable link than just its dimensions, to what it's meant to be commemorating? So that when people look at it they might say 'oh, a memorial to bomber command aircrews' instead of 'what's that?'.

Why not make it in the shape of a Lancaster wing, rather than just the same size.

It reminds me of the IWM in Salford. An utter self indulgent wankfest of design indulgence for the architect. The so called 'air shard', could be a homage to anything, or nothing.

A pox on the countries luvvie architects and designers!

[Pontius Navigator]

I drove into Lincoln and saw it not.

I drove down Bishopsgate and saw it not.

Finally, looking hard from Pelham Bridge I saw it.

As I drew closer I saw it not.

Sorry, tall as it is, you would seem to need to stand on the Castle walls to see it.

For memorials of a period the memorial should be of that period. An excellent example had to be the sea of poppies at the Tower.

[StuartP]

It reminds me of the IWM in Salford. An utter self indulgent wankfest of design indulgence for the architect. The so called 'air shard', could be a homage to anything, or nothing.


I haven't seen the Bomber Command spire so I can't really pass comment, but I wholeheartedly agree with that ! Aren't museums supposed to have 'stuff' in them too ? You'll struggle to find the exhibits in IWMN, whereas at Cosford my wife managed to get claustrophobic in a building big enough to hold 3 V-Bombers and a Belfast.

[Corporal Clott]

It's absolute rubbish and I think it is NOT a fitting tribute. Next we'll find out that the steel came from Germany!

The building 'with echoes of the Lancaster' is also total ****e.

CPL Clott

[caped crusader]

Reading through the posts it is interesting that apart from B Word's grandfather and his chums no other veterans have expressed their disgust at the design of the memorial.

All of the Bomber Command veterans I have spoken to have expressed their appreciation for the effort put in to have the memorial erected and none of them have criticised the design. They should be the true judges. I'm just glad we have the freedom to comment thanks for what they did for us.

The Walls of Names are quite moving and for some of the surviving veterans it has enabled them to pay tribute to comrades who did not survive.

I think that the vision and drive of Tony Worth, the former Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire, to have a memorial to all of those Bomber Command aircrew listed on the 3 Rolls of Honour in Lincoln Cathedral is most commendable. The project will now be extended to include all of those who lost their lives in Bomber Command.

No, German steel was not used in the construction.

One of the comments made about that fine memorial in London is that it does not tell the story of the Bomber Command aircrew and how they were betrayed at the end of the war. The planned interpretation centre will rectify this.

[Jollygreengiant64]

For £10 million, why couldn't they build something useful and educational like a bomber command themed pub...

[The B Word]

Oh FFS, what has a rusty spike got to do with Bomber Command. Even the wingspan thing is way too tenuous.

http://internationalbombercommandcentre.com/files/new-memorial-wingspan.x367.jpg

Its as rubbish as the Angel of the North.

[Chugalug2]

TBW:-
Another Insult to Bomber CommandThe insult to Bomber Command was not ennobling their CinC, unlike every other UK commander of similar rank, and of his Command being conspicuous by its absence in Churchill's victory broadcast. That pee'd off the old lags far more than the lack of a campaign medal, though the carping on about Dresden came a close second. I suspect that their attitude to the stone in Lincoln Cathedral, the Green Park Memorial, and this "IBCC", is that they all perform in their various ways an act of Remembrance.

That is all they want, the same as the BoB boys, to simply be remembered, especially for those among them who made the ultimate sacrifice. Aesthetic acceptability is in the eye of the beholder, but it is the heart that matters, not the eye.

[Courtney Mil]

The people in Bomber County that made this memorial most certainly did not go to all the effort and expense of fund-raising, designing, building and engraving all the names in order to insult anyone. Quite the opposite. And, to be frank, it's a bit late now to come over all insulted. It's not to my taste either, but recognise that it is intended as a tribute; nothing more, nothing less.

Say you don't like it, by all means, but to dismiss such an effort to honour the bomber crews as an insult because we don't like the "art" is plain churlish.

The one in London is more to my taste, so I shall be flying to the UK for Rememberence weekend to visit it.

You decide where you will remember them.

[The B Word]

That will be me just going to London then.

Churlish? Not really, I don't recognise it as a fitting tribute at all when compared to the Memorial in Green Park or the even simpler stone on Beachy Head. The Team behind this should know that there are some that find this type of modern art memorial not to their taste - so we don't make the same mistake ever again.

Over and out...

[BEagle]

Personally I prefer the uplifting ambience of the 'spike' with its echoes of Lincoln Cathedral, situated high on Canwick Hill in the middle of Bomber County, to that rather depressing neo-classical mausoleum-styled structure in Green Park....

I'm glad to read that BC veterans like the Lincoln memorial - it's their opinions which matter most, of course.

[Al R]

Unassuming, thought provoking, modest and poignant. A destination in its own right rather than an incidental accompanying edifice to the commute. I like it.

[Wander00]

In the style of this age, a tribute to an earlier generation. They like it - 'nuff said, IMHO

[Lima Juliet]

It's hideous...:yuk:

I said so a while back on another thread when this was first announced. I agree to the Emporer's new clothes comment (which I also stated over a year ago).

I guess this memorial will be like Marmite - like it or loath it!

LJ

PS. I quite like Marmite, though. :ok:

[Maxibon]

Gosh, what a lot of whining. Simple fact is that it's not really about any of us; it's about our exceptionally brave forefathers who did their job, probably not giving a tinker's toss as to what some 70-year-hence memorial would look like.

The bottom line is that, as with the rather abstract Holocaust memorial, or the bombed church tower in Berlin, it's there to make people think and it's certainly doing that judging by the posts.

Be thankful there is a memorial but as with Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard, the memorial is irrelevant. If you don't like it, don't look at it, just remember that there were 120,000 odd individuals across the globe that fought for the right to erect such a sculpture.

[Pontius Navigator]

Just back from visiting the site. MiL' s boyfriend, RCAF, had been a casualty.

Sadly no access to the site,the road is not made up and it was not visible from the top of the hill. From the common trees obscure the view from several aspects.

Lots of work remains to be done.

[iRaven]

Lot's of work remains to be done.

Yes, hopefully a bulldozer to flatten the site and build something more befitting!

[Chinny Crewman]

Lots said about this which is good as it raises awareness. Regarding the spire and memorial walls; the remaining veterans and families like it which is good and we all know what opinions are like.
Regarding the £10m, if raised part of this will be used to create a digital archive. A great many documents and photos both official and otherwise will be placed online for all to see and the Uni of Lincoln is currently working with the International Bomber Command Centre to interview all of the surviving veterans to create a "living archive" This is all dependant on further lottery funding and public donations so whatever your views keep talking about it to anyone who will listen.

[Onceapilot]

I think it would have been so much better in shining stainless steel.

OAP

[ursa_major]

I was at the unveiling on Friday, spoke with plenty of the veterans in attendance, and all that I spoke to were happy with the memorial. Many commented that it was good to have a lasting memorial up in Lincolnshire as that was where they flew from, not London.

Regarding the cost, the total is £9.5m, over half of which is accounted for by the Chadwick Centre, which will tell the story of Bomber Command and those who served in it, plus the digital archive which will bring together and make accessible photos, documents, oral histories and so on that are currently either not available or not easily accessible.

These two parts of the project will, IMHO, do more for the memory of those who served in Bomber Command than a piece of (admittedly very nice) statuary on a small footprint in a park in London that can be seen only fleetingly from the road outside the park, that cost just over half the total cost of the IBCC project (£5.6m) and does not record the names of those lost, does not offer any kind of context to the history nor make available anything for research or reading by the families of the veterans and future generations.

I'm in no way denigrating the memorial in London, it's a beautifully-executed piece of statuary and a very poignant symbol of the crews. It serves a purpose as a focus for formal ceremonies with their associated protocols and is a thought-provoking place to visit. The Lincoln memorial may not be a classically-acceptable piece of sculpture, may lack the slightly overawing formality embodied in the London memorial, but the overall project will deliver a lot more in terms of making the history accessible and keeping the names of those lost alive for future generations.

As an example, Joe & Joanna public want to teach Joe jnr about what great-grandad did in the war when he was killed. Assuming great-grandad was shot down over Germany and buried in a CWGC grave, they have the options of:

1) Going to the CWGC cemetery in Germany to see his headstone and maybe getting close to where his aircraft came down and explaining as best they can to Joe jnr the background to what happened;
2) Going to London to see the Bomber Command Memorial and explaining as best they can to Joe jnr the background to what happened;
3) Going to Lincoln, seeing his name on the walls of names to give human-scale context to how many of his contemporaries also made the ultimate sacrifice, then visiting the Chadwick Centre to see documents and photos relating to great-grandfather and his crew and learning about the history of Bomber Command and what they achieved.

For current generations who were brought up in close proximity to the stories and people involved, London is a superb memorial to those we knew and the stories we were told. Once those people have passed, who & what is left to perpetuate those stories, those names, when maybe the intervening generation was so disinterested in what dad/grandad did during the war that they ignored the stories or didn't take them in to sufficient depth to pass the history and family connections on to future generations? Can a family go to the London memorial and Joe jnr go back into school on Monday and say "I put a poppy on my great-grandad's name and saw photos of him"? Will the London memorial show in terms that the general public can understand, what 55,573 names actually look like when engraved permanently into steel, what the sheer scale of the human loss looks like?

The London memorial quotes Pericles, Lincoln will quote the men who took part, and in the case of those still with us, will quote them in their own voices. How many of you wished you could hear your late father/grandfather's voice again, years after he died? To paraphrase one voice heard on Friday: "We weren't heroes, we were young men, and spent a lot of our time being scared". Lofty quotes from classical text seem somehow inappropriate in a place where they become individuals again rather than just a number.

That's where the memorial in Lincoln comes into its own, and that's why there's room for both London and Lincoln when it comes to memorials for Bomber Command - they complement, rather than compete with, each other.

As for the material, I wasn't a fan of the weathered steel for Lincoln, but up close, the light on the rust changes minute to minute, and it almost takes on a life of its own. Having walked around the site early on Friday morning, seen the dew formed on the walls of names, the light on the walls and spire, it really changed my mind. I'd rather have the current material than shiny steel - shiny looks nice briefly then dulls and fades, draws criticism for decay or lack of maintenance.

I'm not part of the IBCC team, but having spent almost 3 years running a project with a team of volunteers to document all aircraft accidents in Lincolnshire during WW2, collating a book from the research and creating an electronic version to be given to schools in the county as an educational resource to aid teaching local history, I understand the importance of being able to relate names to events, and to ensure that those names and their deeds are recorded for future generations. It's not just about the overall number, it's about the individual men involved, their lives, their deaths. The 55,573 were 55,573 individuals, husbands, fathers, sons, brothers. Lincoln personalises them again, deals with the loss at an understandable, human, level, not just an impersonal overall total.

U-M

[Valiantone]

I am with Ursa Major on this having grown up in Lincolnshire. (and lived in within the flightpath of Waddington a couple of times).


I do like the London memorial, and stood silently for a few minutes at it the other weekend. Impressive as it is, I would like to see more than just a statue of Crews and am pleased that something has been built in Bomber County.


V1

[radar101]

Ursa Major has nailed it - well done sir.

[NutLoose]

Going to Lincoln, seeing his name on the walls of names to give human-scale context to how many of his contemporaries also made the ultimate sacrifice, then visiting the Chadwick Centre to see documents and photos relating to great-grandfather and his crew and learning about the history of Bomber Command and what they achieved.



Totally agree, it's rather like walking along the glass wall at Duxford etched with all the losses to the USAAF, it puts it all into perspective.

Another possible good reason it being the way it is if it used a lanc in the design, you would possibly get the "what about all the other types" questions.
The Bomber command memorial in London neatly skirts that issue by showing a super renditioning of a bomber crew, which when all told is what it is all about, though the roof structure echos the geodetric design of the Wellington bomber, one wonders how many notice that.

[Tankertrashnav]

Excellent post U-M :ok:

[MPN11]

I sit on ursa_major's side of the fence.

The Capital City of UK, and indeed the Empire, of those who fought and died is a place for a formal statuary monolith. Lincoln, at the heart of "Bomber Country" isn't like that ... but the mental echo of the spire poking through the murk saying "You're almost home now" does it for me.

And the rest of package sells it to me completely, having just visited the 8th AF Museum (http://mightyeighth.org) in Savannah, GA. The artefacts and the history they bring back to life are far more important, IMO.

MPN11 ... Formerly of RAF Waddington

[Lima Juliet]

Ursa Major

I agree in part, but to add balance, in the London area you could:

1. See some of the names are on the Air Forces Memorial at Runnymede.
2. Visit the Bomber Hall at the RAF Museum (where you can probably see a full size version of your relative's aircraft).
3. Visit the Bomber Command Memorial.
4. Watch the QBF from Green Park in June with normally the BBMF lanc and then go to the Memorial.

All of those I would rather do than visit the 2 carbuncles in Lincoln. The wall of names is great, but it doesn't need to be in rusty steel. The marble wall in Washington for the Vietnam War is far better and has a similar number of names (~58,000). I think we could have done better for our Veterans by providing something more classic. Of course they like it, anything is better than they had before - which was nothing! However, like my school reports "could do better"! :ok:

LJ

[Heathrow Harry]

" which is nearly twice the cost of the far more tasteful Bomber Command memorial outside the RAF Club in Piccadilly."

last time I looked outside the RAF Club all I could see was a London Transport Bus Shelter..................

[Chugalug2]

UM:-
Many commented that it was good to have a lasting memorial up in Lincolnshire as that was where they flew from, not London. But a great many of them did not fly out of Lincolnshire. Are we to have a separate memorial centre in each bomber county?

The whole essence of the RAF Bicester project was to avoid any such partisan and parochial territorial problems by having a Bomber Command Heritage Centre on neutral ground (ie Oxfordshire), easily accessible from all directions and on the very periphery of the town, at a perfectly preserved pre-war and wartime unpaved airfield that housed a Bomber OTU where they formed into the crews (of their own accord on the hanger floor) in which they would live or die.

It wasn't to be of course and I think a great opportunity was lost. I haven't any objections to the form of the IBCC, I do however have some reservations about its location.

[Pontius Navigator]

Chug, my MiLs boyfriend was an FE on Halifax based in Yorkshire. He still visited Grimsby when off duty.

He flew out of Croft.

[ursa_major]

But a great many of them did not fly out of Lincolnshire. Are we to have a separate memorial centre in each bomber county?

Chug, my memory's a little hazy on the history of the project, but I seem to recall at some point in the past, possibly 2012-ish, it was to be the "Lincolnshire Bomber Command Memorial". Objections along similar lines to yours followed, and the project is now the International Bomber Command Memorial.

The walls of names in place at present cover 1 & 5 Group losses, with the other Groups being added as part of phase 2. Both groups operated from airfields within the county but also were responsible for stations in other counties too.

That gave rise to some of the initial confusion over operational casualty numbers when the memorial project first got underway. The three Bomber Command Rolls of Honour from Lincoln Cathedral were used as the basis for the count, originally containing some 21000 names (9000 from 1Gp, 12000 from 5Gp). However, the actual total who died flying from the county would seem to be smaller than this - approx 18000 as I recall, but I can't lay my hands on my final figure at present. I arrived at this figure from an analysis of Bill Chorley's works. Yes, I did sit and spend several evenings going through all of the volumes counting up the number of dead who departed from airfields in Lincolnshire - done in response to a friend's request... The difference between the totals would appear to be accounted for by losses from sorties undertaken by the Groups' Squadrons from airfields in other counties. So even at the end of phase 1 of the project it's not just about Lincolnshire but already includes losses from other counties.

I'd guess that the comment I referred to arose from the veterans I spoke with having flown from the county either for the entirety of their operational service or at least part of it. I did note others around in the gathering wearing badges of squadrons that did not operate from the county during the war but did not have the opportunity to speak with them.

U-M

[The late XV105]

I like it, and on the day I went to pay my respects to those who gave their life for my freedom it looked superb soaring in to the sky. I also like the more traditional Bomber Command memorial in London and find that equally fitting and thought provoking.

Purely out of interest - and with no desire to spark a debate that is completely academic to this thread, it is not rust. I accept that to the eye and to the uninitiated - like me - it appears so, but accurately, it isn't because whilst it certainly is oxidisation it is not iron oxide and doesn't flake off.

http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t493/PPRUNE64/IBCC/IMG_160808143606.png

http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t493/PPRUNE64/IBCC/IMG_160808134825.png

http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t493/PPRUNE64/IBCC/IMG_160808140418.png

http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t493/PPRUNE64/IBCC/IMG_160808135058.png

http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t493/PPRUNE64/IBCC/IMG_160808141258.png

Spot the Spitfire:
http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t493/PPRUNE64/IBCC/IMG_160808141703.png

[NutLoose]

I do like that, the metal "ageing" really sets it off, it reminds me of Cosford where they have the same effect on the structure which works in harmony against the museums striking silver of the metal cladding.