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This story was submitted to the People's War site by Pam Vincent of Age Concern Shropshire Telford & Wrekin on behalf of the late Dennis J Haynes and has been added to the site with the permission of his widow, Barbara Haynes, who fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

I feel it is important that people have some understanding of the life — and death —of Bomber Command aircrew during those terrible years. It is also important to put into perspective the scale of Bomber Command attacks on German towns.

The major Luftwaffe raid on Coventry which destroyed the centre of the city was accomplished with 500 tons or so of mixed H.E. and incendiary bombs.

Essen, in the Ruhr Valley, is a city of similar size and industrial capacity, and was subjected to many major Bomber Command attacks. At least 4,000 tons of mixed H.E. and I.B.s would be deposited upon that unfortunate city with the massive Krupps Industrial complex at its centre on each raid.

With every city and large town in Germany similarly periodically attacked — the most sophisticated and efficient air and ground defence systems were developed to combat the “terror fliers” as RAF bomber aircrew were dubbed.

As a measure of this defence, when the so-called Battle of Berlin started in November 1943, Bomber Command had a daily average of 890 aircraft with crews.

At the conclusion of that battle four months later in March 1944, Bomber Command had lost 1,047 bombers and well over 7,000 aircrew. In addition, 1,682 bombers were damaged of which more than 100 were totally destroyed on landing back in Britain.

New inexperienced aircrews replacing those killed over European air space had to learn the hard way in the most ferocious air battle in history.

Bomber aircrews were well aware that only 29% of them would survive a single tour of 30 operations and that only 9% could except to survive 2 tours.

To wives, children and grandchildren of these survivors, I would say that whatever the success or failure since, your husband, father or grandfather is a unique brand of man and deserves your enduring respect.

I was photographed with HM Queen and HRH Princess Elizabeth who awaited our landing back at Mildenhall from an attack on flying bomb sites in Northern France. That day was the completion of my tour of operations, though later that year I started a second tour with Pathfinder Force.

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