Bomber Command

They waged a massive strategic bombing campaign against German industry, oil plants, transport, and cities to crush enemy war production.

It is estimated that 10,000 Australians served within these forces, known as Bomber Command, and more than one in three were killed.

Although they represented only a small proportion of Australians who served during the Second World War, their losses accounted for around 20% of Australia's combat deaths.

Even before they encountered the enemy, the flights themselves were dangerous.

Dropped from aircraft in huge quantities, the foil reflected radar signals, filling German radar screens with false returns, making it much harder to tell where the bombers were.

Particularly with Window, it negated a great deal of the flak.

That voice is Australian Bomber Command veteran Arthur Doubleday.

Well, once it was known what it could achieve, it would give a tremendous boost to, uh, to the crews.

I think you might have seen them do that in 1938 as well.

The obvious play, which we don't think about, I mean, Bomber Command, Britain was investing huge resources in Bomber Command even before the war, so Britain had no real army to employ on the continent, but they certainly had Bomber Command, which was... still growing, but already had some capability.

The obvious play at that point, which was not really discussed until 1940, just before the German invasion, was to move Bomber Command to French bases and bomb the Ruhr.

That's putting real pressure on Germany.

Bomber Command, with the French, had enough bombers to It wouldn't have been the bomber campaign in 1943 or 44, but they could have attacked some targets, and this would have been very unsettling

for the German

home front to have any British and French bombers over the line.

Oh, no, we can't do that.

After that, we'll have lunch and then we have some tours arranged afterwards.

Yes, so one group will be going up to Bomber Command on a vintage bus, which is going very nice.

Another group are going to the Vintage Vehicle Society.

We have a cathedral tour and Joe and Rich, the mayor's officer, are taking a walk, a walking tour from uphill down to the Guildhall to shoot for some people to do that.

... uh, uh, it's a US air base.

It'd been used for the US Bomber Command for a long time.

Okay.

Uh, and most recently in the war, in the bombing campaign against Iran, with the permission of, uh, the former Prime Minister Keir Starmer.