In this book Bishop, the writer of Fighter Boys which commemorated "the few", turns his attention to "the many". The many aircrew who made up RAF Bomber command in World War Two, the many Germans who as aircrew, flak gunners or ground crew fought the aerial fleets, and the many civilians on both sides who were killed or whose houses and businesses were destroyed in air raids.
Bishop charts the changing British " for it is Britain and the Empire bomber boys he writes about "policy. The first chapters describe the early days of bombing " aiming for strictly military targets with precision bombing. These tactics failed with heavy loss of aircrew and little damage to the targets. But it was not until after the raid on Coventry which Bishop describes in detail that the British policy changed.
The reaction and the new policy might seem "An eye for an eye". The new policy, area bombing, was to bomb industrial cities, aiming particularly at "working class housing'. They were trying, vainly, as it turned out, to destroy German morale. This is the policy that led to the firestorms in Hamburg in which 40,000 were people killed by carbon monoxide poisoning, alone, that reduced Berlin to rubble. In the last months of the war it destroyed the centre of Dresden. This is the policy that has been criticised as a holocaust. Many of the towns like Lubeck, where it was first tested, Rostock and most famously of all Dresden were not military targets
This policy was criticised by anonymous airmen as well as church leaders like Bishop Bell of Chichester and Lord Lang who had just before the war retired as Archbishop of Canterbury. The question they asked are as relevant today as they were in Vietnam and in any other major war now that humans have "weapons of mass destruction'. As Bell said, "How can there be discrimination in such matters when civilians, monuments, military objectives and industrial objectives all together form the target?". The question is more pronounced when the British claimed to be morally superior to the Nazis.
Bishop's own view is clear from the introduction of this book.. Bremen "was attacked some 70 times. As a result 575 aircrew were killed. So were 3562 civilians". And a little later: Bremen was bombed "on the night of 17/18th January, 1942. Only 8 of 83 planes dispatched found the targe and little damage appears to have been done. The Nazi newspapers the next day denounced the raiders as "terror fliers'. As they did so 16 Nazi bureaucrats met at Wallansee to coordinate the extermination of the entire Jewish population of Europe." Patrick Bishop's claim is that to hold back on any method of defeating the Nazis would have been a crime and that bombing helped to convert the German nation to democracy.
This moral position at first seems non-Christian. It's hardly turning the other cheek and letting your enemy slap it as well. But the response comes: it's not my cheek that the enemy is slapping.
These questions: "What is justified in war?' and "Can attacks on civilian targets ever be justified?' are questions each of us " as citizens " need to ask of the current military campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan and any other conflict
Bishop records the answer the famous BBC reporter Richard Dimbleby gave broadcasting after being a passenger in a plane piloted by that legendary Bomber leader Guy Gibson. "I know what a giant bomb does and I couldn't help wondering whether in the area of its destruction such a man as Hitler, Goering or Goebells might be cowering in a shelter." Dimbleby knew what he was talking about. He flew 19 missions as a reporter; a feat of great courage.
Each of us may have a different answer but as Christians we need to ask these questions then act in some way on our answer.
But there was another question asked at the time: even if it were morally justified " was it a success? As Bishop reminds us, the Battle of Britain was in part won because the Germans gave up bombing airfields and aircraft factories and began area bombing instead. Even though Hamburg was reduced to rubble in the 1000 bomber raid and 1,200,000 (two thirds of the population) were evacuated, war production there was almost back to normal within two months. In the attacks mainly on Berlin between November 1943 and March 1944, 1047 bombers were shot down. At that time the total number of bombers available on any one night ranged from 700 to 1000. That is the whole of Bomber Commands strength at the start of the "Battle of Berlin" was destroyed. Many Germans died many more were made homeless, but no essential target in Berlin (mainly railway yards and canals) was put out of action for more then a month.
But most of the book is about the people. It is about the men who served. It tells of their backgrounds, from all classes and parts of the British Isles and beyond (the commander of the elite Pathfinders was Australian). Flying was seen as such a glamorous service that even in the times of the worst losses of aircrew there were always more candidates than needed,. Bishop describes the training, some of which happened in the Empire and so giving some recruits their first overseas trip and how over 8000 airmen died in training, some in totally avoidable accidents.
The stories he recounts of aircrew flying in unheated planes, in conditions so icy that fuel started to freeze, distances so great that planes sometimes ran out of fuel on the way back (that is how Guy Gibson lost his life) are disturbing. But the stories he tells of airmen trying to rescue others, of some pilots flying their planes so other crew could bait out but knowing that they themselves wouldn't be able to do so makes one wonder what it means to be human and sacrifice for others. These are men who knowingly killed many civilians yet sacrificed themselves to save their friends.
His story is at times heartbreaking, telling of young couples courting with the almost certain knowledge that the young man would die over Europe.
Bishop tells us that of the125,000 aircrew in Bomber Command, 55,573 died. And that 125,000 includes some who (like my father-in-law) never went into combat. Perhaps 65 per cent of all combat crews died. Many others (like my neighbour when I was a child) were shot down, injured and taken prisoner. No other armed service had such a casualty rate. By January 1942, the RAF had lost more then twice its entire bomber aircrew strength in September 1939. And yet there is no memorial to the aircrew. Bishop writes that he hopes his book will help change that. I think it will. It is a memorial in itself.
