While the evacuation of Dunkirk continued under increasing pressure of the Nazi German forces, it was not only British troops which arrived at the harbour. There were also French, Belgian and Polish troops. Only half a year before, the Poles had fought the Nazi invasion before escaping via neutral Romania. From there, most made their way to France to continue the fight. Once there, their superior training and that most precious commodity – combat experience – stood them in good stead. The Polish Army in France numbered 82,000 men from Poland or émigré families. The Polish Air Force in France had 86 aircraft fully operational, although most were second-rate aircraft disdained by the French. During the Battle of France, Polish pilots destroyed 56 German aircraft.

By this time they had undergone a process of ‘natural selection’. In other words, those that had experienced Blitzkrieg twice – and survived – clearly had a lot going for them. For the Poles, who had been driven from their homeland in 1939, only to be forced to flee again, Britain was now the ‘Island of Last Hope.’

However, the RAF authorities had doubts about the value of the Polish crew. Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding, commander of Fighter Command, refused to allow them to serve in RAF squadrons for fear they’d instil a defeatist mentality in the British airmen. Instead, national squadrons would be formed. The first were No. 300 and No. 301 bomber squadrons and No. 302 and No. 303 fighter squadrons.

The Polish veterans knew they were good. Often older than their RAF comrades, nearly all were fully-trained and each had an average of 500 hours flying. They brought to this country valuable ‘corporate knowledge’ of the business of air fighting, and with it, the British thought, a touch of arrogance.

On 30 August 1940, No. 303 Squadron was on a training flight near Northolt, led by Squadron Leader Ronald Kellett, when Pilot Officer Ludwick ‘Paszko’ Paszkiewicz spotted an enemy formation being attacked by Hurricanes. Paszkiewicz called out to Kellet but, receiving no reply, he broke formation and promptly shot down a Messerschmitt 110. On landing, the Pole was reprimanded by Kellett for his indiscipline and then congratulated for his success. That evening Paszkiewicz, deeply religious and a teetotaller, got drunk for the first time in his life. The following day, 303 Squadron was declared operational.

At the end of the 16-week campaign, the top-scoring Fighter Command unit was No. 303 Squadron, which in only 42 days claimed 126 enemy aircraft destroyed. One of the most successful individual pilots – with 17 victories – was Sergeant Josef Frantisek, a Czech who also flew with ‘303’.

Trained to get in close, Polish airmen made the most of their eight .303in machine guns; and all of the Hurricanes on No. 303 Squadron had their guns harmonised to converge at 200 yards rather than the standard RAF spread of 400 yards. However, they were not reckless. This is borne out by the fact that during the Battle No. 302 and No. 303 Squadrons each lost only eight pilots, a figure much lower than that of most RAF units.

Pilot Officer Miroslaw Feric, a pilot on No. 303 Squadron and standing on the left in the image below, described the experience of shooting down a Messerschmitt Bf 109:

‘I caught up with him easily, he grew in my sights… it was time for firing. I did it quite calmly and I was not even excited, rather puzzled and surprised to see that it was so easy, quite different from Poland when you had to scrape and try until you were in a sweat, and then, instead of you getting the bastard he got you.’

The RAF was quick to recognise the calibre of the men serving with them and it should be congratulated for allowing the Polish and Czechoslovakian pilots their head. The Slavs in turn appreciated the RAF, which, according to veterans, was efficient, fair and understanding of their needs. The Air Force was also truly meritocratic and it is enough to say that it encouraged the best and the brightest of two principled, courageous and resourceful nations to participate fully in the successful defence of Britain’s airspace.

The statistics make interesting reading. The 146 Polish pilots, some 5% of Fighter Command’s strength, claimed 203 enemy aircraft for the loss of 29 of their number killed. This represents 7.5% of Fighter Command’s total score or 1.4 enemy aircraft for every Pole engaged. On the 15th of September, now celebrated as ‘Battle of Britain Day’, one in five of the pilots in action was Polish.

Dowding admitted he was wrong about the Poles, and would write:

‘Had it not been for the magnificent material contributed by the Polish squadrons and their unsurpassed gallantry, I hesitate to say that the outcome of the Battle would have been the same’.

It was not only in the air that the Poles excelled, for the ground personnel of ‘302’ and ‘303’ were the pick of the Polish Air Force. Their skill, dedication and capacity for hard work made for high rates of serviceability on the two Squadrons. The ground crews’ finest hour came after the fighting of 15 September, when No. 303 Squadron’s Flying Officer Wiorkiewicz’s team managed overnight to restore nine apparently ‘un-repairable’ Hurricanes for the next day’s operations.

Polish ground crew was not all-male. Many Polish women served with the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF). The Polish women played an important role within the Polish squadrons. The first recruit was Helena Paszkiewicz who completed her training by October 1941. Polish WAAF’s worked alongside mechanics and armourers. In all some 45 trades including domestic, clerical, medical and technical were covered by the trained Polish personnel. Nicknamed the ‘Waafki’, the Polish WAAFs were allowed to wear Polish Air Force cap badges and insignia to distinguish them from their British counterparts. Approximately 1,426 women served in the Waafki.

In honour of all those who served 80 years ago, we are organising our Hurricane 80K Challenge in which we are challenging you to walk, run, jog, swim or bike 80K in 80 days. More than 4,000 people have already signed up. Lisa shared with us ‘Today as part of my 80K challenge I ran 20K around East Sussex. This beautiful memorial was for “Warrant Officer Stanislaw Jozefiak” who served in the war (1940-1946) in the Polish Air Force. It totally made me reflect on how lucky we all are because of brave service men and women’.

The Hurricane 80K Challenge was created to inspire you all with the Battle of Britain story. But it has taken on a new meaning to many of us during this difficult time.

Operation DYNAMO, the evacuation of Dunkirk, commenced on the evening of 26 May 1940. By the time the evacuation ceased on the morning of 4 June, 338,000 Allied troops had been brought away. Although Britain had lost almost all the heavy equipment and artillery it had despatched to France, the recovery of the troops of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) allowed it to rebuild its armies. If the men of the BEF had been captured at Dunkirk there was little prospect of Britain continuing in the War, their recovery provided the seed corn for the British Army, rebuilt and expanded, to help defeat Nazi Germany. The success of DYNAMO was widely celebrated at the time as a miracle of deliverance and the ‘Dunkirk spirit’ has become the British epitome of stoicism in the face of utter adversity.

The success of DYNAMO was not just celebrated in Britain. The myth of the little ships, collected from British ports and crewed by citizen sailors, crossing the Channel to rescue the nation’s soldiers held an idealism almost ready made to appeal to the American public. Even before the evacuation was complete RL Duffus penned an editorial in The New York Times which helped convey what Dunkirk promised for the future arguing that:

‘So long as the English tongue survives, the word Dunkirk will be spoken with reverence. For in that harbour, in such a hell as never blazed on earth before, at the end of a lost battle, the rags and blemishes that have hidden the soul of democracy fell away. There, beaten but unconquered, in shining splendour, she faced the enemy… It was the common man of the free countries… This shining thing in the souls of free men Hitler cannot command, or attain, or conquer… It is the great tradition of democracy. It is the future. It is victory.’

On 4 June 1940, Churchill caution the House of Commons that ‘wars are not won by evacuations’. Many will be more familiar with the final part of his address on 4 June where he exhorted that in Britain:

‘We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.’

The reference to ‘growing strength in the air’ was not Churchill’s only reference to the Royal Air Force. In the main part of Churchill’s address, he noted that:

‘there was a victory inside this deliverance, which should be noted. It was gained by the Air Force. Many of our soldiers coming back have not seen the Air Force at work; they saw only the bombers which escaped its protective attack. They underrate its achievements.’

If Churchill’s rhetoric didn’t dispel all criticism from the men who, whilst at Dunkirk, asked ‘where was the RAF?’ it has subsequently shaped the histories of DYNAMO. The supposed absence of the RAF at Dunkirk is now recounted as another myth in histories of DYNAMO.

Instead of asking what the RAF accomplished historians have previously satisfied themselves with demonstrating that the RAF was at Dunkirk. Fighter Command’s 2,200 sorties during the nine days of the evacuation demonstrate that the extreme view — that the RAF did nothing — is absurd. The extent that RAF contributed to the result is, however, far less clear.

Comparing the losses of the RAF to those of the Luftwaffe during the DYNAMO is no way to gauge the effectiveness of the two air forces. It is, however, one frequently employed by historians and was used by Churchill at the time to defend the RAF when he claimed it inflicted four times the losses it suffered. During DYNAMO Fighter Command lost 87 airmen and over 100 aircraft to enemy action over Dunkirk whilst the Luftwaffe lost 97 aircraft to the RAF, with others damaged but repairable, these included 28 Messerschmitt Me 109s and 13 Me 110s.

The measure of Fighter Command’s success, however, is not in the destruction of enemy aircraft but the extent to which it defended the evacuation. Initially, the RAF attempted to provide continuous air cover, but faced with large German formations it adapted its tactics and instead looked to provide air cover in strength — with patrols involving four squadrons — but not continuous air cover. The move from stronger patrols at less frequent intervals was not successful.

The four squadron patrols were often unable to cooperate effectively over Dunkirk. The flying conditions over Dunkirk, with low-cloud and thick smoke, would have taxed pilots experienced in combat operations as part of larger formations. During DYNAMO, it was almost impossible for patrols involving more than two squadrons to maintain contact and fight together. By the time the patrol had reached the French coast the squadrons had become separated and the patrols broke up into single, or pairs of squadrons, with part of the patrol below the cloud cover whilst others, having initially been instructed to provide top cover, flew above it. The result was that there was ineffective support between the squadrons at different heights and the force structure of the patrol was wasted.

The larger patrols also quickly became disorganised in combat, as the squadrons fragmented into sections, largely dissipating the effect of the patrol. Norman Hancock, a Pilot Officer in No. 1 Squadron, recalled that:

‘You went as a squadron towards your target. You were in appropriate formation but once you’d engaged the enemy then by and large people tended to split up. You might get the odd pair who stayed together, but by and large the squadron was split up and individually attacked targets. You didn’t stay as a solid machine of 12 aeroplanes pointing in the right direction. It didn’t work that way… everybody disappeared. … [After the first attack] there was no cohesion to the squadron.’

The patrols by four squadrons reduced the combat effectiveness of Fighter Command and it is evident that more frequent patrols, involving only two squadrons, would have been more effective. This was a lesson drawn and learnt from the air cover by the officer in charge, Air Vice-Marshal Keith Park, and he applied that lesson during the Battle of Britain despite the vociferous advocation of larger formations from elsewhere in Fighter Command.

Following the move to larger formations there were only two clear days of weather for the Luftwaffe to launch full scale attacks. On the first day, 29 May, the evacuation suffered heavily and the Royal Navy temporarily suspended the use of its modern destroyers — a decision which based on the lift capacity of remaining ships would have left over 100,000 men to be captured. On the second day of clear weather, 1 June, daylight evacuations were suspended. One defence of the RAF’s air cover is that German artillery fire west of Dunkirk was at least as responsible for that decision. A detailed review of the decision behind the suspension indicates this is entirely false.

One consequence of the decision to suspend daylight evacuations was that over 30,000 men of the French rear-guard were abandoned at the end of the evacuation. For the French military, Dunkirk was ‘certainly not a victory’ but rather ‘the least unfortunate resolution of what could have been a catastrophe’.

Losses within the evacuation fleet were also significant. The total loss of named ships and vessels during DYNAMO exceeded 190 of which 45 were definitely the result of air attack. Many ships were lost in situations where air attack could be considered contributory factors. Furthermore, the ships lost or damaged owing to ‘collision or other misadventure’ were largely smaller craft. If smaller crafts and types are excluded, the total loss of named ships was at least 79. Air attack was the cause of 56 percent of these losses, E-Boats, U-Boats and mines caused 18 percent, and artillery fire caused 6 percent. The Royal Navy alone lost six destroyers and six minesweepers, with another 19 destroyers and seven minesweepers damaged. Furthermore, a number of ships quit the evacuation because of the German air attack. This was not isolated to civilian crews. The air attack was so exceptionally severe on 29 May that one of the Royal Navy’s destroyers — HMS Verity — did not sail for Dunkirk again because of the psychological effect of the Luftwaffe’s attacks on the crew, and a member of the ship’s company later attempted to commit suicide on the mess deck.

It is also necessary to remember that the Luftwaffe successfully destroyed the harbour facilities at Dunkirk. This should have made large scale embarkation impossible and left the evacuation dependant on the number of men who could be lifted from the beaches. Instead, the Royal Navy’s extemporised use of the Dunkirk Mole made it possible to rapidly embark large numbers of men on to the ships capable of crossing the Channel at speed.

The RAF’s contribution was not, however, limited to the air cover provided by Fighter Command. Coastal Command flew patrols across shipping routes in the English Channel, patrolled the Belgian and Dutch coasts for enemy naval activity and undertook bombing raids. Patrols were also flown in an attempt to prevent interference from German submarines and Schnellbooten (designated as U- and E-Boats respectively by the British). The threat of U-boats with unrestricted access to the evacuation fleet is an obvious one but the work of Coastal Command against E-Boats and was of particular importance. These craft were fast, manoeuvrable motor boats armed with torpedoes and fast-firing light anti-aircraft guns.

German U-Boats and fast attack E-boats were a significant threat to the evacuation, particularly before the switch from Route Y, the longest naval route to Britain. The SS Abukir was lost on 28 May to the E-boat S-34. The S-34 torpedoed Abukir at point blank range. Only 24 survivors of Abukir were recovered and, according to some estimates she had sailed with 500 souls on board. Amongst those were a number of RAF aircrews almost all of whom were lost.

On the night of 29 May, a British destroyer HMS Wakeful was lost following a torpedo attack by a German E-Boat and sank immediately. A second destroyer, HMS Grafton, stopped to rescue survivors and was torpedoed by a German U-Boat. In the confusion that followed HMS Comfort, a 60-ton drifter, was fired upon and then rammed and sunk by HMS Lydd.

On 31 May the French destroyer Sirocco was sunk by an attack made by the German E-Boat. Earlier, the French Destroyer Cyclone had been damaged by a torpedo fired from the German E-Boat S-24. However, against the continuous sustained period of operations one might expect such losses to be far greater than they were. For instance, on the night of 31 May, four groups of German E-boats were positioned east of Dunkirk.

The disruption caused to the evacuation by German naval vessels could have been far greater had it not been for the patrols of Coastal Command. As well as providing advanced warning of E-Boat movements the operations by both Avro Ansons and Lockheed Hudsons of Coastal Command made the movement of E-Boats on the Dutch Coast difficult during daylight.

Troop concentration points were bombed during this period and Bomber Command in particular, undertook a number of sorties against the German rear areas in an attempt to disrupt the German attempts to resupply their forward units. In the early evening of the 27 May, 24 Bristol Blenheims of Number 2 Group bombed German motor convoys and rail yards which were bringing up supplies. Vickers Wellingtons of Bomber Command undertook sorties by night in an attempt to disrupt German movement to, and supply of, the Dunkirk bridgehead.

On 25 May, No. 2 Group issued instructions to its squadrons as to the nature of the situation they faced:

The primary objective of daylight operations varied at different points of the Dunkirk evacuation; however, the attacks aimed to disorganise, and cause the maximum interference to, the enemy’s lines of communication and logistics network and were maintained throughout DYNAMO.
Many crews of Bomber Command returned with reports of ‘direct hits’, however, all too frequently these reports proved overly optimistic and little physical damage resulted from the attacks. The delays produced by Bomber Command’s attacks may only have been measured in hours, however, during the critical stages of the evacuation this was sufficient to provide a measure of relief to the Allied rear-guard on the perimeter at Dunkirk. The German forces at Dunkirk were at the end of extended supply lines, infantry was being brought up to engage Allied forces on the perimeter and artillery moved further south to the formations preparing for further operation against the remaining French forces. Furthermore, the sluice gates controlling the irrigation around Dunkirk had been opened and, although the flooding was not widespread, it restricted the German lines of approach to the perimeter.

The Royal Air Force Museum highlights the diverse nature of Britain’s flying services over time. We do this because we are entrusted with telling the story of the RAF Family, which has strong and vibrant branches all over the world. We are, moreover, conscious of the need to provide exhibitions and outreach that are inspiring and relevant to all sections of Britain’s cosmopolitan society. What emerges clearly from our work is the success with which the RAF has embraced integration; and how this has enabled it to get the best from its people.

Launched in the spring of 2018, the RAF Museum’s ‘Hidden Heroes’ project has explored and shared inspiring, and little-known, stories with our communities, our business partners and our RAF colleagues. The project has witnessed close co-operation between Museum departments to harness our unique collections; and dynamic partnerships with external organisations and individuals willing to support our fundraising activities.

‘Hidden Heroes’ has been masterminded by Renee Coppinger, the Museum’s Development Manager. Renee hails from New Jersey, and has brought some of her native ingenuity to bear on a project as complex as it is rewarding.

In 2013, the BBC’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ programme brought actress Minnie Driver to the RAF Museum to find out about her late father, Ronnie. As Aircraftman 1st Class Charles Ronald Driver, the front gunner of a No. 9 Squadron Wellington bomber, Ronnie displayed outstanding bravery during the disastrous Battle of Heligoland Bight on 18 December 1939. Although Minnie’s father was immediately awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal, she knew nothing about this chapter of his life. It was then that the phrase ‘Hidden Heroes’ was coined. Minnie now acts as an ambassador for the RAF Museum, promoting our work and raising awareness of people, like her father, whose stories need to be told.

On 22 March 2018, the Harmony Club of New York City, in cordial partnership with the RAF Museum’s American Foundation, provided the venue for the inauguration of the ‘Hidden Heroes’ project. Joshua Levine is an author and broadcaster, and was a historical adviser on Christopher Nolan’s feature film ‘Dunkirk.’ He is also an RAF Museum ambassador. In New York, Joshua gave an inspiring presentation that described how, during the Second World War, 20,000 Jewish men and women – some six percent of Britain’s Jewish population – joined the RAF to fight against tyranny, racism and anti-Semitism. Joshua showed how these people served shoulder to shoulder with comrades of all faiths in every Branch of the Service, and how they earned a reputation for exceptional courage and devotion to duty.

He also stressed that throughout the war, Jewish airmen and airwomen volunteered for the front line fully aware that they risked torture and execution if captured. Over 900 of their number sacrificed their lives in defence of their families, faith and tradition and for what they believed was right.

Here are some of the ‘Hidden Heroes’ Joshua was pleased to introduce that evening:

Sam and Doris Miara, were a Cardiff couple who responded to Kristallnacht (the pogrom on Germany’s Jewish communities in November 1938) by selling their clothing business and joining the Air Force. In April 1941, Sam, a No. 38 Squadron wireless operator, was killed on board a Wellington in the Middle East. The loving, and sometimes heart-rending, letters the Miara’s exchanged while apart are held in the RAF Museum’s Archive.

Bernard Kreger, was a young Londoner who volunteered for the RAF as soon as he came of age. An Air Ministry clerk misspelled his surname “Kregor”, but so strong was Bernard’s desire to take the fight to the enemy, he cheerfully accepted the new name and used it for the rest of his life. Kregor became a mechanic, but later applied to train as a bomber navigator. When asked by a Wing Commander why he wanted such a dangerous job, he replied ‘Sir, I am a Jew, and my war with the enemy began long before September 1939.’ In 2003, Bernard gave the Museum the Forces Jewish Prayer Book he had carried with him for comfort and guidance throughout the war.

Andrew Mamedoff, a United States citizen of Russian parentage, flew Spitfires with No. 609 Squadron. One of 34 Jewish pilots to serve in the Battle of Britain, he later became a founding member of No. 71 (Eagle) Squadron: the first of three RAF units composed of American volunteers. Lively, witty and brave, Andy Mamedoff was killed on 8 October 1941 when his aircraft crashed on the Isle of Man in poor weather.

After proving to be a skilful pilot in training, Lawrence ‘Benny’ Goodman was retained as an instructor for much of the war. Benny eventually persuaded his commanding officer to release him to a front-line unit; and in August 1944, he was selected to join No. 617 Squadron, the celebrated “Dambusters.” In the last months of the war, he flew Lancasters on daylight missions delivering 12,000lb Tallboy and 22,000lb Grand Slam earthquake bombs. He participated in the raid that finally sank the Tirpitz on 12 November 1944, and attacked Hitler’s mountain residence at Berchtesgaden on 25 April 1945. Benny is a Londoner by birth and is in his centenary year.

Alfred Huberman, who lives close to the RAF Museum, flew as a Lancaster rear gunner with Nos. 576 and 83 Squadrons. Although Alfred completed 38 bombing operations against targets in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe, he told his family he was serving with a training unit so they wouldn’t worry. Advised to change the religion stamped on his identity tags before flying over the Reich, Alfred politely refused, saying ‘I’ve lived my life as a Jew and I’ll die as a Jew.’

Joshua’s thought-provoking paper went over exceptionally well with his American audience, who were surprised and delighted by these new stories. On 16 April, he successfully reprised his presentation at the Beverley Hills Hotel on Sunset Boulevard; again, embracing the heroism, comradeship and success enjoyed by Jewish people in RAF blue. He was joined in Los Angeles by Minnie, who spoke movingly about her father’s battle with PTSD after experiencing the death of his close friend, Walter Lilley, the rear gunner on the ill-fated mission in 1939.

At the start of 2018, the Governor of Gibraltar, His Excellency Ed Davis, and the CO of RAF Gibraltar, Wing Commander John Kane, invited the Museum to mount a ‘Hidden Heroes’ event there to commemorate the Service’s centenary. On 8 May 2018, Wing Commander Sophy Gardner MBE, a retired RAF officer, researching a PhD with the Museum’s support, gave a presentation about the RAF and Gibraltar attended by 90 people. Sophy writes:

‘Anyone who has flown to Gibraltar airport for the first time will have been impressed by the dramatic views of the Rock from the air. I remember the boss of the RAF detachment had obtained an enormous RAF100 banner which he hung close to the border crossing so that it would greet every person who arrived in Gibraltar, on foot, by plane or by car that year! I discovered during my research at the Garrison Library that a Short Type 184 Seaplane made the RAF’s first flight from Gibraltar on 9 May 1918. I gave my talk on the eve of this one-hundred-year anniversary and it felt very special to be able to share that news with our lovely audience.’

Another, perhaps strange, coincidence is that General George Augustus Eliott, who successfully defended Gibraltar during The Great Siege of 1779 to 1783, has a connection with the RAF Museum. It transpires that one of ‘The Cock of the Rock’s’ direct descendants was Air Chief Marshal Sir William Elliot, the head of RAF Fighter Command from 1947-1949. Sir William’s personal Spitfire Mk. XVI, RW393, is currently on display in Hangar 3 at the RAF Museum in London.

Word of ‘Hidden Heroes’ travelled far and wide, and there was a buzz of anticipation when the project at last came home to the RAF Museum on the evening of 15 November 2018. In an enjoyable and well-attended event at our London site, Joshua again gave his inspiring presentation, and again, it was well-received. Five proud Jewish veterans were guests of honour: Lawrence ‘Benny’ Goodman; Alfred Huberman; Bernard Carton, a former Bomber Command flight engineer; Jack Toper, a Bomber Command wireless operator who survived being badly burned and became a plastic surgery ‘Guinea Pig’; and Ralph Levy, who served as a ground engineer during the Berlin Airlift of 1948-1949. These Jewish airmen were warmly applauded by a grateful audience.

Gibraltar has been described as a ‘beacon of tolerance’ and it has a large and long-established Jewish population. A partnership between GIBRAEL, the Gibraltar-Israel Chamber of Commerce, and the RAF Museum, brought ‘Hidden Heroes’ to the territory for a second time on 20 February 2019. Joshua addressed an enthusiastic audience of 75 people which again included His Excellency Ed Davis and Wing Commander John Kane, representatives of Gibraltar’s Jewish community, and several British military personnel. All responded warmly to Joshua’s presentation, which had been refreshed by the inclusion of new stories generated by the Museum’s pro-active PR work and collecting policy. The ‘Hidden Heroes’ project was by now well established and growing in popularity, and in autumn came more exciting news.

On 13 November 2019, it was announced that the Royal Air Force Museum and the Chelsea Foundation would work together in a partnership sponsored by the owner of Chelsea FC, Roman Abramovich. This partnership would support the RAF Museum’s development of the Jewish ‘Hidden Heroes’ project, and would be timed to coincide with the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain in 2020. Maggie Appleton MBE, CEO of the Museum said:

‘We are tremendously grateful to Roman Abramovich and Chelsea FC for supporting the RAF Museum’s Jewish ‘Hidden Heroes’ project. The Battle of Britain was the RAF’s defining moment, when they stood firm against Hitler and fascism. With many Jewish RAF personnel playing crucial roles, the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain in 2020 provides the perfect opportunity to remember these incredible people. By highlighting their stories, we want to play our part in calling out the rise in anti-Semitism – and wider racism – in our society.’

Bruce Buck, Chelsea FC’s Chairman said in turn:

‘We are delighted to be able to support the RAF Museum with this project. Chelsea FC is committed to tackling anti-Semitism through education and the Jewish ‘Hidden Heroes’ [project] tells important stories about the bravery of Jewish RAF personnel during the conflict.’

The partnership was formally launched on 4 December 2019 at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea FC’s ground in West London. Before the game that afternoon, Benny Goodman and Bernard Carton were introduced to the appreciative crowd. The Jewish ‘Hidden Heroes’ project has generated much positive media coverage, with features appearing in the Times, the Guardian, the Daily Mail, the Times of Israel and RAFA’s ‘Air Mail’ magazine.

The RAF Museum and Chelsea Foundation are now inviting people from all over the world to submit their own stories – as well as those of families and friends of Jewish personnel in the Second World War – so that they can be preserved and shared online at the Museum’s public sites. Stage One of the Jewish ‘Hidden Heroes’ project involves the collation of stories from Jewish personnel within the Museum’s RAF Stories digital site. The project will eventually include: video interviews with Jewish veterans and family members; animated videos of Jewish stories drawn from the Museum’s archives; and screenings of these videos in its galleries.

Let the last words be those of Joshua Levine who has explored and shared what it meant to be Jewish in wartime in New York, Los Angeles, Gibraltar and in London. Joshua concludes:

‘The received wisdom that Jewish people were the victims of the Second World War has eclipsed any evidence that they fought back. But Jews did fight back. Jews, men and women, desperate to hit back at the Nazis, joined the Royal Air Force. This project is hugely important, and as the nephew of a wartime Wellington pilot, I’m exceptionally proud to be involved.’

The RAF’s specialist bomb disposal unit, No. 5131 Squadron, disbanded last month, with its responsibilities passing to the British Army. Here, we look back on the history of RAF bomb disposal.

In every bombing campaign since the First World War a proportion of the bombs dropped have failed to go off; even in peacetime there is an ongoing need to deal with weapons that have failed to detonate during training on dedicated ranges, terrorist bombs or munitions left over from previous wars. Over many years an increasingly sophisticated organisation has developed to deal with these weapons, to which all three services have contributed, together with government and civilian agencies. RAF bomb disposal teams have, from the Second World War onwards and alongside their British Army, Royal Navy and civilian colleagues, made a significant contribution to this work. As Dave Lowe, an RAF bomb disposal operator, explained, RAF bomb disposal teams provide ‘specialist knowledge for things like ejection seats and missiles … it gives a subject-matter expert view on air-delivered weapons, on how they operate, how they work and what needs to be done to them’.

In recent years, bomb disposal within the UK has been divided between the Royal Navy, British Army and RAF on largely geographical lines, with the Metropolitan Police providing their own capability in London. Mike Stocks, a former commanding officer of No. 5131 Squadron, explained how ‘We had a call-out responsibility for improvised explosive devices and conventional devices, so we had an area, a patch based around Wittering that we had to respond to, in 10 minutes and 30 minutes respectively for the teams.’

Bomb disposal within the RAF has a long history, however. During the First World War the bombs used were, for the most part, relatively small and simple in design. In many cases they could be exploded where they fell or made safe by members of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC). Although the RAOC had expertise in handling munitions, skilled personnel were not always called on in such situations. Norman Macmillan, a pilot serving with No. 45 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps in France, recalled how a suspected unexploded bomb on the Squadron’s airfield was dug up for inspection by a team with no training or experience in bomb disposal work – and discovered to be an unexploded British anti-aircraft shell.

By the start of the Second World War, the RAF had developed the armourer’s trade to a much higher level of sophistication, and it naturally fell to these servicemen, with their training and expertise in air weapons, to deal with the RAF’s share of unexploded bombs during the conflict and, more specifically, bombs that fell on RAF airfields or those found in crashed aircraft. Meanwhile, the Royal Navy’s bomb disposal experts specialised, naturally enough, in naval weapons such as torpedoes and sea mines, and the Army’s Royal Engineers took on a great deal of the bomb disposal work that did not fall into the remits of the other two services.

Courses in bomb disposal were run at various locations during the Second World War, including the RAF Armament School at RAF Manby in Lincolnshire. Christopher Draper, a naval officer who attended an early course, recalls how much of the teaching was on British bombs due to lack of knowledge of German weapons at that time:

‘A few weeks previously I had been sent to the R.A.F. Armament School at Manby, in Lincolnshire, for a one week course on “Unexploded Bombs”. This was more amusing than instructive because, at the first lecture, the instructor began by saying: “Of course we know nothing about German bombs yet, so we will give you this brief course on our own bombs and pyrotechnics”. Nevertheless, when, a few days after the blitz on Ford, two holes in the ground were discovered, obviously containing unexploded bombs, “Fish” sent for me and said: “You’ve just done the unexploded bomb course at Manby, so go and dig ‘em up”.’

Mervyn Base, an RAF armourer who trained in bomb disposal at RAF Melksham in 1940, similarly remembered how ‘This course was largely based on the practical knowledge gained by Army personnel in the field, and as a result was somewhat limited’ and that at the end of the course the officer in charge said ‘Well chaps, that’s all we know to date, the rest I’m afraid you will have to find out for yourselves’.

Experience, however, developed rapidly with the rising tempo of German air raids on the UK. One of the best-known RAF bomb disposal experts from this time, Wilson Charlton, was awarded the George Cross early in 1941; the citation published in the London Gazette gives some indication of the intensity of operations through the second half of 1940:

‘Flight Lieutenant Charlton is responsible for all work in connection with enemy bombs in an area comprising the greater part of two counties. Both by day and night, during recent months, he has dealt with some 200 unexploded bombs. He has successfully undertaken many dangerous missions with undaunted and unfailing courage.’

Charlton was later sent to the Far East where, under slightly mysterious circumstances, he recovered a number of Japanese bombs and fuzes from China, providing valuable intelligence on a previously unknown area (a fuze was the component of a bomb that causes it to explode.It can work in various different ways, including detonation on hitting the ground, detonation a given time after impact or detonation if the bomb was moved after hitting the ground).

The impact on training of the experience gained in a short time is perhaps illustrated by Alec Haarer, who trained in bomb disposal at RAF Melksham towards the end of 1940.He recalled how:

‘For the most part the course at Melksham gave us a good grounding on bombs and fuzes, on how they acted, on safety precautions, and on some of the methods of bomb disposal such as the use of special machines to cut out discs of metal by remote control. It was intensive training, and being new to the service and somewhat awed by the mass of information we were expected to absorb, we worked hard and soberly. We knew that safety for ourselves and our men depended on our ability to recognize one fuze from another and how it operated.’

By September 1940, 188 RAF armourer NCOs had qualified in bomb disposal. They were distributed around eighty RAF stations in the UK, known as ‘X’ stations, and were supported by mobile teams, able to move to wherever they were most needed at any given time. The organisation of RAF bomb disposal developed further in April 1943, with the formation of a wing headquarters overseeing the work of six bomb disposal squadrons. These squadrons would continue to serve through the rest of the war, several of them landing in Normandy in 1944 and one – No. 5131 Squadron – would provide the RAF’s bomb disposal capability into the 21st Century before disbandment in 2020.

The UK’s first unexploded bombs of the Second World War were dealt with by Arthur Merriman, a civilian specialist who had served in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps during the First World War, and Flight Lieutenant (later Squadron Leader) Eric Moxey at Sullom Voe in the Shetland Islands late in 1939. Moxey would later go on to develop an automatic fuze extractor, allowing bomb disposal operators to take cover at a distance during this potentially very dangerous procedure. This did not, however, remove all risk, as the device had to be fitted to the bomb, someone had to approach the bomb to confirm that the fuze had been extracted and it would not, in any case, always work as intended.

The first action of the war leading to the award of a George Cross (although not the first medals to be awarded) was that of Flight Lieutenant (later Squadron Leader) John Dowland and Mr Len Harrison (an ex-RAF civilian armaments instructor) for their actions in dealing with an unexploded bomb in a steamship at Immingham Docks near Grimsby in February 1940.According to the citation ‘The bomb was extremely difficult to inspect and handle as it was wedged with its nose penetrating through the main deck’ and a similar situation was dealt with onboard a trawler in June 1940.These bombs featured a simple impact fuze, designed to detonate the bomb when it hit the ground. If it did not explode on impact it was likely to be due to a fault of some description; it was not designed to catch out anyone attempting to make it safe, but such weapons would not be long in coming.

In the summer of 1940 disposal experts were called on to deal with unexploded German bombs fitted with the Type 17 clockwork time fuze. The clockwork mechanism could be set to detonate a bomb after an interval of anything up to more than eighty hours after being dropped, and there was no way of knowing how any particular bomb had been set; from the point of view of the bomb disposal teams, they could potentially go off at any moment. Methods were, however, developed by which Type 17 fuzes could be made safe, including the use of powerful magnets or the injection of viscous liquids to stop the clockwork mechanism.One significant contributor to this work was Wing Commander Cornelius Stevens, who developed a method of creating a vacuum within a fuze, which would then efficiently suck in the liquid and jam the mechanism. Even so, weapons such as this could cause a great deal of disruption simply by their presence, and introduced a greater degree of danger and uncertainty to the bomb disposal operator’s work; this was even more the case when used in conjunction with other types of fuze, such as those designed to detonate the bomb if it was moved or tampered with.

One example of this was the Zussatzünder (auxiliary fuze) 40, an anti-withdrawal device fitted below a Type 17 fuze. Put simply, if the Type 17 fuze was removed from a bomb, the ZUS 40 would cause it to explode. Squadron Leader Eric Moxey, who had participated in the disposal of the unexploded bombs at Sullom Voe in the Shetlands and made a significant contribution to the development of the automatic fuze extractor, was called to RAF Biggin Hill on 27 August 1940 to deal with unexploded bombs that appeared to have new features, possibly including the ZUS 40.If the fuzes could be recovered intact they would provide valuable information, essential for operators dealing with similar bombs in future. Although he was able to defuse one bomb successfully, the second exploded, killing Squadron Leader Moxey instantly; Moxey was awarded a posthumous George Cross for his actions at Biggin Hill. An example of the ZUS 40 was retrieved for examination only days later in south Wales by Lt Archer of the Royal Engineers.

A further, even more dangerous, development was the German No 50 fuze, first identified by the British in September 1940 and an example of this was also obtained by Lt Archer. This featured highly sensitive switches that would detonate the bomb at the slightest movement after impact. When combined with the ZUS 40 anti-withdrawal device and the clockwork timer of the Type 17 fuze, all of which could be fitted to the same bomb, this created a complex problem for a bomb disposal operator to deal with. The Y fuze, first dropped on London in 1943, was another development, specifically designed to kill bomb disposal operators, and it was only due to luck, in that the first bomb encountered was faulty, that officers of the British Army’s Royal Engineers were able to retrieve an example and develop a procedure for dealing with it. Experiments showed that, if the temperature of the fuze could be lowered sufficiently through the use of liquid oxygen, the batteries would cease to provide power and the fuze could be safely removed.

Alec Haarer, an RAF bomb disposal officer, recalled the danger posed by German ‘Butterfly bombs’, small anti-personnel weapons which – once dropped – could be so sensitive that even the slightest movement would set them off. Examples were urgently wanted for examination and for use in training British bomb disposal personnel, and this was greatly facilitated when Flight Sergeant Handford discovered several bombs that had failed to arm after being dropped on RAF Harlaxton in Lincolnshire in August 1941.

Bomb disposal specialists also had to be fully aware of traps built into British bombs. Eric Chadwick recalled how the “No 37 pistol” – a fuse fitted to some British bombs – had been designed to catch out an unwary German who might try to dismantle it. According to Chadwick it was ‘easy to identify but not to deal with’ and a number of British Army bomb disposal specialists were lost to it, in addition to its intended German victims.

Second World War bombs have, however, continued to appear up until the present day and there has, since 1945, been an ongoing need to deal with these weapons as they are found. Probably the largest of these was a 12,000lb ‘Tallboy’ bomb, discovered when the water behind the Sorpe Dam in Germany was drained for repairs. It had been dropped during an attack on the dam in October 1944, and was made safe by a German specialist, Walter Mitzke, working with Flt Lt J M Waters, officer commanding the RAF’s No. 6209 Bomb Disposal Flight.

Alongside their ongoing work on ‘legacy’ munitions left over from previous wars, and the disposal of unexploded weapons dropped during training, the smaller conflicts of the Cold War period also provided work for bomb disposal teams. Two RAF bomb disposal specialists, Ted Costick and Alan Swan, each awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal, highlight some of this work.

In 1974 Flt Lt Ted Costick was serving at RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus as Officer in Charge of the Explosives Servicing Flight of the Weapons Engineering Squadron. Turkish air attacks during the conflict of 1974 provided a considerable amount of work for Costick and his bomb disposal teams, including a bomb buried in mud, a 750lb bomb in a 6th-floor hotel room in Famagusta and the clearance of a number of unexploded weapons from Nicosia International Airport.

In 1982 an RAF bomb disposal team was sent to the Falkland Islands as part of the task force following the Argentinean invasion. Flt Lt Alan Swan, commander of the team, was called on to deal with two unexploded bombs lodged in the hospital at Ajax Bay. As Alan Swan remembered:

‘It was a bomb in the roof, a bomb in the fridge; the bomb in the fridge had a fuze that I think, they made it up, just welded this on, welded that on, and we had no kit that we could [use] to get at it, and I spoke to the colonel and he said ‘well, we’re going to Stanley shortly, so is it going to go off? I said “well, I would say no”, but, I said, just to put my money where my mouth is, I’ll sleep in that room and a) it was the only empty room, because it had an unexploded bomb in it and b) I was convinced it wasn’t going to go off. And the one in the roof, we couldn’t get at really, we’d have [had] to drop it to get at it, so again I was convinced it wasn’t going to go off so we left it and the army follow-up teams took it out.’

Alan Swan and his team then moved on to Goose Green:

‘My prime directive was to go to Goose Green and clear a Harrier landing strip, which we did, and when we got there we found napalm by the ton on these steel-runnered sledges in the establishment, where the people lived and so that was a major effort trying to get that out without striking sparks and then when we blew it up, Christ, I didn’t know that napalm would blow up like that but it was a massive explosion, massive, and we looked up and we could see one of these things had flattened out, it was the size, like two of those doors, we could see it spinning, coming down to earth, like that, we were running this way, that way, wow, it would have taken you to pieces.’

RAF bomb disposal teams would continue to deal with a variety of situations, involving conventional and terrorist weapons, through the years after the Falklands War, but it was not until the Kosovo conflict in the late 1990s that an RAF bomb disposal team would again deploy overseas. In Kosovo, RAF personnel worked closely with the Royal Engineers to clear a large number of unexploded bombs, shells and other weapons left by the conflict. Michael Haygarth, an RAF officer serving with No. 5131 (Bomb Disposal) Squadron, recalled how, in conjunction with the Royal Engineers, they ‘carried out hundreds of tasks in Kosovo, the guys were doing between eight and thirteen tasks a day, the teams, they were going out at first light, back at last light, we worked with loads of different nations out there, we worked with loads of the non-government organisations, Mine Action Clearance and all those sort of people.’The value of deploying both RAF and Royal Engineers to Kosovo was also highlighted; as Haygarth explained: ‘They were really good with land-service ammunition, mines and mortars and things, we were really good with air-dropped bombs.’

Dave Lowe, an RAF NCO with No. 5131 (BD) Squadron in Kosovo, recalled how, in contrast to what was to come later in Iraq and Afghanistan: ‘the operations in Kosovo were more routine and it was a peaceful environment; while there was still hostility between people there wasn’t a threat to us, we would routinely not wear body armour in our Land Rover and I wouldn’t carry a weapon if I didn’t need to.’

The use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) by a variety of terrorist organisations has been one of the major challenges faced by bomb disposal specialists for many decades. While the weapons used by the armed forces of nation states are likely to have been produced by a known manufacturer and to conform to identifiable patterns, the unpredictable nature and highly variable quality and complexity of IEDs have made them particularly difficult to deal with. Although the devices produced by some groups, or by an individual acting alone, might have been relatively crude, the devices produced by the IRA in Northern Ireland during the Troubles often reached a high level of sophistication, and were dealt with by the very highly-trained Ammunition Technical Officers (ATOs) of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps (RAOC) and then of the Royal Logistics Corps (RLC) after the RAOC was absorbed into the newly-formed RLC in 1993.

The IEDs (or ‘roadside bombs’) used in Iraq and Afghanistan during the early years of the 21st Century posed a further significant threat and these, as with the bombs found in Northern Ireland, would normally be dealt with by the ATOs of the RLC. However, during the conflict in Afghanistan the RLC’s High-Threat IED course – the training course through which a bomb disposal operator became qualified to deal with the devices found in Iraq and Afghanistan – was opened to personnel from other branches of the armed forces and Dave Lowe, an armourer by trade, was the first member of the RAF to pass this highly demanding course. As Lowe explained it:

‘The definition of high-threat then is complex weapons, it can be a complex weapon including RC [Radio Control], so sophisticated in its design. It can be the sheer amount of IEDs, so it could be that there’s so many of them that it was dangerous by that virtue, it could involve suicide bombers, so they’ve got a suicide bomb threat and multiple devices linked together.’

In Afghanistan, the IEDs found were not necessarily very complex in their design, but the sheer number of devices planted by the Taliban caused a significant problem for western forces in the country. In addition, considerations such as climate, terrain and the threat of Taliban attack made the use of robots and protective ‘bomb suits’ impractical on many occasions. From his own experience, Lowe recalled how:

‘There was a big clearance of a road and there was basically an IED belt along this highway, if you want to call it that, it wasn’t tarmacked or anything but we needed to clear that road to link up forces and it was a huge operation and in two kilometres of road in about 48 hours I think I probably did nineteen tasks. I think twelve of those were IEDs or something, I can’t remember but it was just the sheer work, I was finishing one, doing the next, doing the next, doing the next, doing the next so it was just continual, catch a bit of sleep and as soon as I could, do some more.’

Bomb disposal has developed a great deal since 1939, when Arthur Merriman and Eric Moxey approached the UK’s first unexploded bombs of the Second World War. They, and their counterparts in the Royal Navy and British Army, were just beginning to develop the experience and professionalism to be seen in their successors of the 21st Century.The technology involved has clearly developed a great deal, and the situation in Iraq or Afghanistan in the early 21st Century was a long way removed from that of the UK in the 1940s.

Some things, on the other hand, have changed little. There is still the same pendulum between the development of bombs, with new features intended to make them increasingly dangerous to their intended victims, and the development of new techniques by which these devices can be made safe. Some of the techniques have themselves endured for a long time, perhaps in some cases by virtue of their simplicity – the use of a cord to pull a component out of a bomb from a safe distance is one example.

And finally, there is the courage of the bomb disposal operator, making the ‘long walk’ to a bomb with the intention of making it safe. Whether dropped by the Luftwaffe or planted by the Taliban, this, more than anything, has stayed the same.

Even before the first aircraft took to the skies, theorists had envisaged their role in war. The very first bombers were nothing more than the standard little biplanes of the day, flying at 50 to 60 mph. Almost naturally, pilots took it to themselves to carry a few grenades with them and throw them out of a totally open and exposed cockpit. Another popular weapon of the earliest days was bundles of ‘flechettes’. These were nothing more than metal darts without explosives. The idea was that a bunch of these would pierce through the helmets of soldiers below. They caused quite a bit of panic, but it was quickly realised that the chance of being hit by these projectiles was very unlikely.

Gradually the first bombs were designed, such as the 20 lb Cooper bomb, and bomb sights were developed, very rudimentary at first but still a great improvement. As engines became more powerful, more bombs could be carried over longer distance. This culminated with the Handley Page bombers, especially the massive V/1500 which was designed to fly missions to Berlin and back. This shows the revolutionary advances in aviation; only 9 years earlier Louis Blériot struggled to get across the English Channel.

The Interwar period saw the RAF focus on ‘policing the Empire’, a terrible euphemism for suppressing local revolts. Aircraft turned out to be the perfect weapon to control large territories and bomb tribes into submission. It was a sign of things to come, though we shouldn’t fall into the trap of moral equivalence; the times were different back then …

In the 1930s clouds appeared over Europe as the menace from Nazi Germany grew. The prevailing thought was ‘The bomber will always get through’. At the time, bombers had a slight performance advantage over fighters due to having multiple engines. This was the time before radar and a timely interception was deemed unlikely.

It was believed that bomber aircraft would dominate and even decide future wars. When the Second World War broke out, many people and military theorists such as Basil Liddell Hart speculated that much of Europe would be destroyed by fleets of bomber aircraft. Not only bombs, but also poison gas was most feared. In London, this led to a mass evacuation of children. Not only their lives were at stake, but the future of Britain.

Yet, reality turned out to be different for both sides. Bomber Command which was formed in 1936 to group all the RAF bomber squadrons was mainly equipped with light bomber aircraft, such as the Fairey Battle and Bristol Blenheim, carrying only a small payload, with insufficient protection. Very vulnerable against ground fire and fighter interceptions, they were soon forced to fly under the cover of darkness. Basic navigation technology meant targets were difficult to find at night, let alone bomb accurately.

While Bomber Command expanded and introduced heavier bombers such as the Short Stirling and Avro Lancaster, limitations on targets were gradually broken down. A now controversial decision was taken to target civilian centres and break German morale. City after city was bombed by releasing a deadly combination of huge blast bombs and incendiary devices. This ‘area bombing’ strategy was partially driven as a retaliation of similar German actions, but also because accurate bombing of factories, bridges or military installations was impossible. Early reports, compiled in the 1941 Butt report, showed only one in eight bombs fell within a 5-mile radius. Large city centres were the only thing Bomber Command had a chance of hitting at night.

Technology came to the rescue by the introduction of GEE and Oboe radio waves and H2S radar navigation. The first to be equipped with such devices were the so-called ‘pathfinders’, selected from the best crews. Their job was to find and mark the targets with colourful flares before the arrival of the main bomber force. This combination greatly improved the accuracy and proved decisive in the bombing campaign against the German chemical industry, which destroyed most of the synthetic oil facilities, depriving Nazi Germany of fuel, explosives, and other chemicals.

Of all the armed services, Bomber Command suffered the highest number of casualties. More than 55,500 perished which statistically meant that these young men had a higher chance of dying than finishing their tour of 25 (later 30) sorties.

Then, on 6 August 1945 a single bomb changed everything. The Americans dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in Japan, instantly wiping out 90 percent of the city. The ensuing Cold War was dominated by nuclear weapons and mutual assured destruction. Both the West and the Soviet Union had hundreds of large bombers ready to drop enough nuclear weapons to annihilate each other. The RAF deployed its famous V bombers: the Valiant, Vulcan and Victor. A number of these would be on Quick Reaction Alert, ready to take off within minutes.

The current RAF is playing a different game. It now fields stealth jet aircraft packed with laser- and GPS-guided missiles, capable of hitting targets with great precision. The latter is a result of military requirements, but maybe more importantly, the reduction of collateral damage is an important factor in the eyes of the public. On the other hand, the morality of autonomous attack drones, the future of military aviation, will soon be coming to the fore.

On VE day, more than a million men and women of many nationalities and ethnicities were wearing the RAF blue. And the final victory on 8 May 1945 was very much theirs.

Although the Battle of Britain is well known, it was not a decisive victory. The German Luftwaffe quickly replaced its losses and remained a powerful opponent. After the Battle, Fighter Command was tasked with going from the defensive to the offensive but struggled with this change. The first raids on occupied Europe proved to be both ineffective and costly, while Bomber Command, forced to fly over Germany under cover of night, was unable to find its targets, let alone bomb them accurately.

With a bomber force unable to destroy German armaments factories, the decision was taken to defeat Germany by attacking its civilian work force through an area bombing strategy. City after city was bombed and reduced to rubble with half a million German civilians, including women, children, and elderly perishing. Beside questionable from a modern-day moral perspective, the terror attacks totally failed in their objective as they did not lead to a collapse in morale and did not bring Germany to its knees. Conversely, the brave crews of Bomber Command suffered heavy losses. Of the 120,000 who served with Bomber Command during the war, 55,573 paid the ultimate price.

Although the bombing offensive inflicted enormous damage and forced the Germans to divert huge resources from the Soviet Union to the home front, Nazi war production continued to rise. It was only in the spring of 1944 that the war strategy shifted to attacks on the Nazi’s chemical industry, which produced most of Germany’s oil and explosives.

Such specific targets had become achievable as navigation technology had taken great strides forward. The best bomber crews were selected to serve in ‘pathfinder’ units, which would find and mark the target with coloured flares, prior to the arrival of the main bomber force. The Pathfinder Force’s most important aircraft was the fantastic de Havilland Mosquito, equipped with the ‘Oboe’ blind-bombing system and the ‘H2S’ navigation and bombing radar.

 

Aiding the bombers was an elaborate system of deception. Bombers of No. 100 Group carried various jamming equipment, capable of disrupting German radar and radio communications. The best-known device was called Window, which was nothing more than thousands of thin aluminium strips. When dropped, they would overload the German radar readings. A less-know tactic was Operation Corona. This has nothing with the virus but involved German-speaking RAF personnel impersonating German ground control officers. They would tune to the German radio frequency and countermand Luftwaffe instructions, confusing the German night fighter crews. It even happened that German and RAF operators would argue on air who were the real Luftwaffe operators.

The attacks on the German chemical industry were, unlike the area bombing, tremendously successful. German production of fuel and explosives plummeted and never recovered. German tanks were abandoned with empty fuel tanks, and artillery batteries fired shells filled with inert rock salt. The Luftwaffe, starved of aviation fuel, could neither train new pilots, nor conduct large-scale operations.

The fuel paralysis prevented the Luftwaffe’s new wonder weapon reaching its lethal potential. The Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter was faster than any Allied aircraft. It instantly showed to all sides the jet was the future of aviation. But without fuel to fly them, most Me 262s never took to the skies. Those that did were swamped by superior numbers of Allied fighter aircraft such as the venerable Supermarine Spitfire, which was still the main British fighter at the end of the war. The RAF also had its own jet fighter, the Gloster Meteor. Compared to the Me 262, it was a more conventional design, but as a result, also more reliable. Improved versions of the Meteor served worldwide until the late 1950s.

 

As the Luftwaffe had by then become a shadow of its former self, such unmanned missiles were all Nazi Germany had to attack Britain. The RAF and other Allied air forces had conquered complete air superiority. Short Sunderland flying boats and Consolidated Liberator long-range bombers had driven the German submarines out of the seas. Without fear of interception, Douglas Dakotas dropped thousands of paratroopers behind enemy lines. Tactical bombers like the Hawker Typhoon patrolled the battlefields waiting to unleash their weaponry on anything daring to move. North American Mitchells played havoc on German infrastructure by bombing railway yards, bridges, and other tactical targets. German Messerschmitt Bf 110 and Junkers Ju 88 night fighters, built to shoot down RAF bombers at night, had become the prey to the versatile Mosquito night fighters.

Increasingly unopposed, Bomber Command had grown to an impressive and unprecedented force of 1,600 operational Avro Lancaster, Handley Page Halifax and other strategic bombers. Although the attacks on German industry and infrastructure had proven to be very effective, the British government and Arthur ‘Butcher’ Harris, head of Bomber Command, continued to push for terror attacks with Dresden in February 1945 as an eternally controversial coda. It is for this reason that Bomber Command crews had been tragically overlooked for far too long in post-war celebrations.

These young men did, as did every other man or woman in the RAF, their duty to the best of their abilities. Above all, VE Day should commemorate the almost 80,000 RAF casualties who gave their lives for their comrades, their family, their country, and our freedom.

As today is Mother’s Day we would like to feature several RAF stories about mothers. In this blog, we combine the stories of people whose mothers served in the RAF and stories about mothers of RAF personnel.

Our first story is from Katherine Du Plat-Taylor, who joined the Air Transport Auxiliary during the Second World War instead of learning Domestic Science in College like her mother wanted. Katherine served as an Operations Clerk deep underground in the tunnels below Dover. She worked with Air Sea Rescue, plotting the location of aircraft on a table map in an operations room, saving the lives of hundreds of pilots.

Her service required a lot of courage and self-sacrifice, but can you even imagine how terrifying it was for her mother? The story that Katherine reveals in this video can be told about many other mothers, whose children were serving in the military during the war. Every day they lived in fear of receiving some terrible news from the front line.

The heroine of our second story was serving in the RAF herself during the Second World War. Candida Adkins’ mother, Dolores Therese Moggridge, also known as Jackie, served as an ATA pilot, flying more than 1,500 aircraft including Spitfires and received the King’s Commendation for Service in the Air.

In this video Candida tells the story about her mother’s parachute jump. Jackie was the first woman who made a parachute jump in South Africa. This story reveals in detail what a fearless and daring lady Candida’s mother was.

Lynn Martin came to the RAF Museum London to see the portrait of her mother, Violet Sharples, in our recent art exhibition War Brides by Bev Tosh, a Canadian artist. The exhibition portraits showed young women who fell in love and got married to the airmen from different countries during the Second World War.

Violet served as a Leading Airwoman in the RAF and plotted the dreaded V-1 Flying Bombs (“buzz bombs”) detected by early Radar entering British airspace during the Second World War.

At the end of the war Violet fell in love with a Canadian pilot and became his war bride. In 1946, following her husband, she immigrated from England to Canada. Violet’s story reflects the stories of thousands of other young and brave women who made an amazing leap of faith for the love of an airman and moved to the other countries away from their friends and families to start a new life there.

Our next video shows two incredible ladies, a mother and a daughter, who are believed to be the first mother and daughter in the RAF to both become chartered engineers. Group Captain Emily Flynn who is currently serving as an engineer in the RAF, followed the footsteps of her mother, Suzanne Flynn.

However, in Suzanne’s time Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) was much more male-dominated. It was very challenging for her to push the boundaries and choose the career of an RAF engineer. In this video Suzanne tells the story of how she discovered this opportunity and became the inspiration her daughter needed to follow in her footsteps.

Flight Lieutenant Joan Ochuodho joined the RAF in the age of 24 after a succession of jobs in marketing and accounting and serving in the Navy. As she decided to join the RAF in 2003 right at the heat of Afghanistan conflict, all her family disapproved of her idea. Her mother, who was living in Kenya, was the only one who supported Joan and encouraged her to change her career.

In this video, Joan explains how vital it was to have her mother’s support and how it has changed her life.

Our last story is from Emma Marianne, an RAF mother whose son serves in the RAF. When her son joined the RAF Regiment as a Gunner in October 2017, Emma decided to undertake an epic walk to raise money and awareness for the RAF Association. During her ‘Walk for Wings’ she walked more than 2,000 miles visiting all active RAF Stations on the U.K’s mainland finishing in RAF Lossiemouth, where her son was serving at the time.

In this video Emma reveals how she felt handing her son over to the RAF. Her experience can be relevant for many other mothers of RAF cadets. Their instinct is to be with their children and to protect them, but they have to ‘take a back seat’ and let their sons and daughters take care of themselves.

We hope you have enjoyed the stories we selected for the Mother’s Day. All these mothers had different experiences but they all had to show bravery, stamina and support for their children and in my opinion I believe that they all succeeded.

These videos are part of our RAF Stories Project which brings together as many people’s experiences with the RAF as possible. You can download our RAF Stories App to discover more stories and share your own.

The app is specifically designed to make the recording of the new story as easy as possible. If you have your own story of an amazing RAF mother or any other RAF story that you would like to share we would love to hear from you.