Inside Bomber Command

National World - Broadcast Video

The history of Bomber Command as we go Inside The International Bomber Command Centre in Lincoln.

Transcript

00:00The International Bomber Command Centre provides a world-class facility

00:03acknowledging the efforts, sacrifices and commitment of the men and women from 62

00:07different nations who came together in Bomber Command during World War II.

00:12Of the 125,000 aircrew who served, 72% were killed, seriously injured or taken

00:17prisoner of war. The efforts of the RAF Bomber Command significantly changed

00:22the outcome of World War II. In 2009 the then Lord Lieutenant of

00:26Lincolnshire, Tony Worth, formed a trust to realise the dream of building a

00:30memorial that remembered not only the bravery and sacrifice of those who

00:33served and supported Bomber Command but also to officially recognise the

00:37significant contribution of Lincolnshire to the outcome of World War II.

00:42From that dream the International Bomber Command Centre was developed.

00:45Join us as we take a look around the centre in Lincoln.

00:48It was the idea of the then Lord Lieutenant of Lincolnshire, Tony Worth.

00:53His grandfather was one of the very first people in the RAF and he'd got

00:57three uncles, his father and two uncles, serving in the command and sadly the

01:03two uncles didn't come home. So when he became Lord Lieutenant it was really a

01:08mission to do two things. One was to make sure that the story of Bomber Command

01:14was told and those who were lost were memorialised in Bomber County and the

01:21second was to highlight Lincolnshire's contribution to World War II. So he came

01:26up with this concept which was originally one memorial in one year and

01:31raise a million and obviously that was January 2012. It's changed somewhat since then.

01:51Bomber Command was first formed in May 1936 and it went right through the war

01:58until it was disbanded in August 1968 when it was amalgamated with Fighter

02:03Command to become Strike Command. During the war Bomber Command grew

02:10significantly and over 1.25 million people served with Bomber Command during

02:15that period. Lincolnshire was the largest conglomerate of Bomber Command

02:20bases in one county. There's 27 Bomber Command bases in Lincolnshire. At the

02:25height of the war there were 49 RAF bases but 27 of them were Bomber Command bases.

02:30I mean the most famous would be of course the Dambusters raid which flew

02:34out of Scampton in May 1943 when Guy Gibson led his three waves of Lancaster

02:43bombers with their special mines on board to bomb the dams in Germany. The

02:49other major raids came from right across the country really as well as

02:53Lincolnshire of course. The first thousand bomber raid was in 1943 but

03:00that wasn't really repeated for some years until Bomber Command had built up

03:04its large force of four engine bombers, the Lancaster, the Halifax and the

03:10Stirlings. So the centre which was opened to the public in January 2018 involves a

03:18team of 46 staff and we're supported by 400 volunteers from nine different

03:23countries because this is our shop window and behind this is a huge project

03:28where we have pulled together the world's most comprehensive free-to-access

03:32digital repository on Bomber Command. The exhibition includes three galleries

03:37over two floors and it tells the story of service life, life on the homefronts

03:42and the issues that Bomber Command had being remembered and talked about

03:48post-war. It's really an interpretation centre, it's not a museum and it

03:55allows you to interact with all of the displays. We're just about to welcome our

04:01half a millionth visitor later this month and of those visitors 26,000 have

04:07been schoolchildren going through our learning programs. We've had visitors

04:13from 54 different countries and on a daily basis you will hear people here

04:18who have a connection maybe that they didn't know about until they came here.

04:23A million men and women served in Bomber Command over the course of

04:28World War Two and so the connections are spread literally globally. Well it's

04:35brought in visitors from all over the world, all over the country and it's now

04:40risen to become the third biggest tourist attraction in the city and it's

04:45allied very closely with the castle and the Cathedral and it provides a

04:50slightly different offer. There's aviation heritage all over this county

04:54and it's done brilliantly but a lot of it focuses either on the aircraft or on

04:59the station that was there originally. The difference is here is this is the

05:04story of the people. It's their firsthand testimonies that are here and the walls

05:08that are surrounding you here carry the names of 57,861 young men and women from

05:1537 nations who lost their lives protecting our freedom. So the spire was

05:21put up in May 2015 and officially unveiled in October that year and it's

05:27made of Cortana weathering steel which is the same as the Angel of the North.

05:32It's a hundred and two foot or thirty one point zero nine meters high which is the

05:36wingspan of a Lancaster aircraft and at its base it's five meters or 16 foot

05:42wide which is the same as the width of a wing where it joined the fuselage on a

05:47LANC. It's a spire because it links with the Cathedral so for those crews serving

05:54out of Lincolnshire the Cathedral was a sighting point and as you will know the

06:00Cathedral was the tallest building in the world for 300 years because it had

06:03a wooden spire on top of its central tower and this is really a nod to that.

06:08This is the main floor of the Exhibition Centre so around the bottom from far

06:14side right round you have a timeline that takes you through a bomber command

06:18base from 6 in the morning right through and around all the way to 6 the next

06:23morning as well. At the back is a giant map of Europe and a rolling timeline

06:31that tells you shows you where all the raids were how big they were and who was

06:36doing them whether it was the the RAF the American or the Luftwaffe who

06:43carried out those raids and then behind this wall here you have some some films

06:51going on so there's three films that go back to back and are shown

06:58continuously that give you the history of bomb command itself. Lots of other

07:03information as well to look at and some of them are interactive so you know the

07:08kids can enjoy themselves. Okay so this sculpture represents something called

07:12Operation Manor right at the end of the war right the end of April 45 through to

07:17the first week of May what happened is we'd had D-Day the Allies had landed in

07:24June 44 they'd moved across France and Belgium and then into Germany and they

07:30bypassed a huge part of Holland left it occupied and the Dutch people by the

07:34time the end of the war was starving to death they were losing thousands of

07:38people so the British government said to the German high command we're going to

07:41come over and we're going to drop food parcels to the waiting Dutch people

07:45below. Please don't shoot. Anyway off they went and what this sculpture

07:51represents is a Lancaster bomber dropping food parcel to the waiting

07:54Dutch people below. You can see the figures around the outside they're taken

07:58from contemporary paintings and drawings made by Dutch artists at the time. Okay so

08:04here we are at the memorial walls what you can see is surnames only and

08:10initials there's no rank there's no medals so around the corner is Gibson GP

08:15that's Guy Penrose Gibson not wing command Gibson VC DSO DSA DFS DFC and

08:23bar just the name and initials where we do have the same name and same initials

08:29we've got three numbers and that tells that is the last three of their service

08:33numbers so we can identify every single individual on the walls here all almost

08:3858,000 of them. The youngest on here is a young man called Peter Bond he was an

08:43air cadet he was killed while he was having an experienced flight in a

08:48Lancaster bomber he's 14. The average age of all the names on these walls is 23. To

08:56put that in perspective I talk about a young man called David Holford. David was

09:0017 and he joined the Royal Air Force he went to Canada to learn to fly and he

09:04came back he was 19 years old and he was the captain of a Wellington bomber

09:08that's a crew of five. By the time he finished his first 30 missions his first

09:13tour he was 20 years old and he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

09:18A year later he was one of few captains to take his aircraft to chase some

09:23German battleships up the through the Channel and up the North Sea and for

09:28that he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. Four days before he was 22

09:33so still 21 he walked into 100 squadron RAF Grimsby and he was the boss he was

09:39the wing commander. Unfortunately we lost David at 23 when he tried to get his

09:45crippled bomber back to RAF Kelston near Louth, crashed on landing and he died

09:51from his injuries. So this is the crew from Dinghy Young so Dinghy and his crew

09:58were part of the Dam Busters and they were the first crew to breach the Mona

10:03Dam and following that they went to the Ada to see if Gibson needed help and

10:07they were all okay and they were 200 yards from safety when they were shot

10:12down and their bodies washed up at a place called Castricum Anze in Holland

10:17and there is now a memorial there and this crew are going back for the

10:21anniversary of their death to be beside the memorial. There are almost 78,000

10:28names on these walls. 8,000 of those named on here were killed in accidents

10:33so air collisions all sorts of different accidents going on. 10,000 of

10:38them are Canadians, over 4,000 are Australians, 1,700 New Zealanders, 550

10:48Americans as well. Many of the Americans came across the border into Canada from

10:52from the US and joined the Canadian Air Force so that he could get into the war

10:57before America actually came into the war. So 550 Americans. Also 132 ladies

11:06are on the wall as well. They're ladies who such as nurses and ATS girls who

11:11were killed during accidents or crashes whilst on board one of the command aircraft.

11:18It is impossible to say enough about what these brave men and women achieved

11:23during the war or the price they paid for it. We owe it to them and to ourselves to

11:27remember them and their stories.

11:57you

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