Bomber Boys:
 

A tad late with this but Channel 5 are putting out a documentary at 2100 tonight called "Bomber Boys: Revealed." It will stress that only one in 20 survived a raid.

PPP

Also on Radio 4 extra tomorrow from 2.30pm onwards and then across the day there is a drama documentary starring Samuel West about a RAF Bomber Command raid on Germany in 1943. It will be broadcast in real time and includes interviews with the men and women involved on both sides.

Are you sure about that statistic Pop? Should that not have been "survived a Tour" (30 OPs)?

It starts at 20:00 in my neck of the woods.

Quote from the Radio Times:-

" ......... it took a heavy toll on air crews: in every raid, one in 20 didn't return."

Based on Len Deighton's book 'Bomber'. Heard it the first time round. Excellent.

The one in twenty figure - or 5% - was a working figure for acceptable losses. The raid losses did not necessarily represent fatalities and many successfully bailed out. Where the loss rate on a particular raid was much higher than 5% then they became very worried.

The Augsberg raid was a case in point. Other raids early in the war with Wellingtons, Blenheims or Hampdens suffered much higher losses.

The thousand bomber raids however often had much lower loss rates as the concentration of force saturated the defences.

The final overall loss of life was around 50%.

A late friend of mine flew just one mission from which he failed to return. as a sgt nav it was his one and only Op and that the raid immediately following the inundation of the Ruhr and the predicted absence of flak, searchlights etc. Int had overlooked the fact that flak batteries used generators.

Caz, that was the figure quoted in the Radio Times. And as Pontious states. there were included in that figure over 10,000 who were taken prisoner.

Speak. You are right 2000 was correct of course. I thought it informative but it lacked something...........I am not sure what.

PPP

Ah, PP, but what Caz was objecting to was the sentence you actually posted, which is:
That's a 95% fatality rate on every raid!

Ooops and ooops again. :O

Those who have read the book will know that one of the central characters, Flt Sgt Lambert DFM, withdraws himself from flying duties after the raid, and is made to suffer the indignity of being reduced to the ranks and being put on sanitary duties for his "Lack of Moral Fibre (LMF)" as combat fatigue was then known.

During 30 years of running a militaria shop I had hundreds of conversation with war veterans. Many were quiet heroes, some were obvious fantasists, but on only one occasion did I have a long conversation with a bomber pilot who had suffered the same fate as Lambert. After 40 years the experience still haunted him, and he was obviously bitter about the way he had been treated after his nerve finally cracked. In some ways I respected him more than any of the others I had met.

Great book and a great radio version - catch it if possible.

Or indeed get the CD version. It bears repeated listening.

90 ops
 

I have just finished a book called"pathfinder squadron".its the real story of a navigator on a Mosquito pathfinder squadron.He survived 90 operationd crashing on the last one.I will not say any more of the story only that he suffered a heart attack after it at the age of 22 due to stress!!Cracking good book!

I would wholeheartedly recommend buying the CD version of 'Bomber' - there are moments of great pathos particuarly when the 'fiction' is intertwined with recollections of aircrew and groundcrew - what debt we owe and they never even gave them a campaign medal.

Later comments from others mean that I stand corrected regarding the medal situation - thanks chaps.

Yes they did - it's called the Aircrew Europe Star. No-one else got a "special" medal. Once you open that can of worms you'll be getting the Fighter Command Medal, The Coastal Command medal, the submarines medal, the commandos medal and the Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and all medal.

Best left as it is.

Replaced by the France and Germany Star for Ops after 6 June 1944.

Which ignores Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg et cetera!!

One of the best projects of my career, helping organise the Pathfinder 50th Anniverasry Weekend at Wyton in 1992. Absolutely amazing.

According to Wiki: '55,573 killed out of a total of 125,000 aircrew (a 44.4% death rate)'.

RAF Bomber Command - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Only the U-boat crews had a worse loss rate (28,000 of 40,000 - 70%).

My dad flew with Bomber Command and did 29 ops in 1942/43. I asked a squadron historian who had the records if there was anything noteworthy about my father's operations. 'No', he said, 'except he survived'.

In 1942 the Air Ministry worked out the chances of someone surviving one tour or two tours.

For Heavy and Medium Bombers it was 44% one tour and 19.5% two tours.

For Torpedo Bombers it was 17.5% one tour and only 3% two tours.

I believe I have heard that the Lancaster was relatively narrow and hard to get out of in an emergency compared to the B-17 and B-24.

I noticed that the same Wikpedia which listed 55,573 killed out of 125,000 also listed 9,838 as prisoners of war a ratio of 5.6 to 1 killed vs. POW. For the U.S. Eight Air Force it shows 26,000 killed out of 350,000 and 23,000 prisoners of war for a ratio of close to 1 to 1. I am curious as to whether that difference is to the ability of escaping the aircraft flown.