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