Hipper:
According to Wiki: '55,573 killed out of a total of 125,000 aircrew (a 44.4% death rate)'
.
I seem to remember that the 50% death rate sometimes quoted takes account of the many new members of Bomber Command not yet operational when hostilities ceased. When they are taken out of the final total then the appalling statistic of 1 in 2 not surviving is arrived at.
Re the medal business, I take PN and TTN's point, but I have always felt that the skies over Germany constituted a geographical Theatre of War in their own right (what Harris termed the Battle of Germany). If a campaign medal had been struck for that alone, a la the Atlantic medal, then much of this rumbling discontent would have been avoided. It would thus have become predominantly, though not entirely, in effect (if not officially) a Bomber Command Medal. Having a generic France Germany Star instead diluted that effect. Given that the Aircrew Europe Star that preceded it was known as the "Bomber Command Medal", the intent of those who stopped the latter in favour of the former gives grounds for some suspicion. By D-Day the anti BC, anti Harris, rhetoric was already in its stride, culminating of course with Churchill's infamous Dresden memo and the non-ennoblement, alone among his peers, of the AOC-in-C Bomber Command.