Bomber Command Monument placed at Beachy Head today

At Beachy Head in Eastbourne today a monument was finally placed by the help of an RAF Chinnock to remember all the crews of Bomber Command who never made it back home. Please see link below;

BBC News - Bomber Command monument airlifted to Beachy Head

 

And not a day too soon.

 

Excellent news, it is pleasing that after nearly 70 years out in the cold the brave crews of Bomber Command are getting the recognition they justly deserve. Some may question what they did but that is to ignore the context of the time and to denigrate the gallantry and selflessness of these crews, going out into the bitter cold hell night after night with minimal chance of survival. If you've got a problem with the bombing campaign, take it up with the Politicians. Or perhaps the Germans.

 

What a wonderful post!

May I also suggest that we should now issue a campaign medal to the survivors of Bomber Command and to the families of those since departed.

 

A 55% chance of being killed.
Found the following statistics on the web :

Taking an example of 100 airmen:
55 killed on operations or died as result of wounds
three injured (in varying levels of severity) on operations or active service
12 taken prisoner of war (some injured)
two shot down and evaded capture
27 survived a tour of operations

A retrospective campaign medal? Most certainly.

 

I'm going to put my head well above the parapet here, but why do we need 2 bomber command memorials, on top of the national armed forces arboretum in Staffordshire, and the Air Forces memorial in Runnymede (where the names of all 20,000 airmen without a known grave are remembered, also right under the Heathrow flightpath)? The other memorial will cost 5.6 million pounds and be located at the top end of Green Park. And if there are now 2+ memorials to Bomber command (another could be considered the statue of Bomber Harris at the beautiful RAF church on Fleet Street, and then there's the Battle of Britain Memorial flight's Lancaster Bomber), how can they be considered to be forgotten? Personally I don't consider the bombing of Germany to have been of such a big impact on the war, I don't think that on this one the end justified the means. Not that I will begrudge those who were ordered to carry this out though.

IMHO we have an annoying attitude to the Armed Forces in this country. Nick Clegg once said we spend too much time talking about WW2, the tabloids destroyed him for this but then continued to hand out free DVD's about how we won the war. WE don't talk enough about the conflicts since 1945, remember that 1968 is the only year since 1945 when a british serviceman did not die for this country. More Falklands veterans have killed themselves since the surrender than died during the conflict. Then there is the continuing issue of Gulf War Syndrome, and the stresses put under those returning from the Balkans (where digging up dead bodies they were prevented from saving was not something anyone joins the forces for). Don't even get me started on Armed Forces day, a Gordon Brown idea to hide his decimation of what was left of the forces). If we all really cared about the defence of the nation, everyone would write to their MP to ask for an increase in the defence budget, not for new kit, but to ensure families get proper housing, personal kit (too many buy their own before a deployment), and tackle the terrible morale that exists at the moment.

And before anyone accuses me of being an armchair critic, I begin my training in September.