Set in steel, a salute to 58,000 Bomber Boys
IT IS likely to be the last great Bomber Boys get-together.
And huddled beneath blankets, the remaining veterans of Bomber Command displayed all the stoicism for which their generation is renowned to make sure they did their bit yesterday at the opening of the International Bomber Command Centre.
Around 300 veterans – the youngest aged 93 – travelled from all over the world for the formal opening of the memorial centre in Lincoln at a bitterly-cold outdoor ceremony.
And as the Last Post sounded, those that were able took to their feet to salute the fallen.
The heroes described their pride at finally seeing a memorial carrying the names of all 57,861 who died serving or supporting Bomber Command in the Second World War. Their number included George ‘Johnny’ Johnson, 96, the last remaining ‘Dam Buster’. Former No 617 Squadron member Mr Johnson was the bomb aimer in Joe McCarthy’s crew in Lancaster AJ-T, which attacked the Sorpe Dam on the famous raid of May 16/17, 1943. He said: ‘My greatest wish was to see the centre completed so our story can finally be told.’
Fred Hill, 96, flew 30 operations in Hampden bombers from the age of 19, when the average lifespan for crew was just five missions.
He said: ‘We all lost friends, and it is excellent idea that it is the veterans themselves who opened the memorial rather than a politician.’
The centre boasts a digital archive which will preserve 900 oral testimonies from veterans and 190,000 documents, photos and letters. The memorial features the names of the fallen on 28 steel walls at the foot of a shardlike spire – the height of a Lancaster’s wingspan. Lincolnshire, which calls itself Bomber County, was chosen as the site of the IBCC because 27 RAF Bomber Command stations were based in the county during the war.