PER ARDUA: The Air War and Beyond - linked with The RAF Pathfinders Archive. As the Archive’s website has been so successful and has expanded so greatly, this second website has effectively become a digital annexe to it, containing information…
On 11 February 1942, the prestigious German battleships the Scharnhorst, the Gneisenau and the Prinz Eugen broke out of the westerly French port of Brest and sailed east, up the English Channel, in a break for the security of the German-controlled…
When adding the details of the loss of the Richards crew to the AFTERMATH website yesterday, I looked up Arthur North on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website and discovered that the epitaph used for his permanent gravestone came from…
This morning I posted the details on the RAF Pathfinders Archive of the loss of the Commanding Officer of 97 Squadron, Wing Commander Carter, and the crew of a Norwegian pilot Lieutenant Jespersen. Whilst there were other Pathfinder casualties on…
Thinking about David O'Connell this afternoon (see the last post), I remembered a long section in Anthony Cotterell's account of D-Day and afterwards, in which he meets an RAF team come to service the aircraft and construct airfields to support…
I have posted two items this morning on the AFTERMATH website, both related to the Schoonselhof Cemetery in Belgium, one about a member of the RAF, David O'Connell, who was almost certainly working on the construction of airfields or in…
Here is a delightful photograph and story in another of the RAF's brilliant PR campaigns. BONZO JOINED THE RAF IN ITALY
A sudden revelation about the photograph in the post of 27 April. See this new page: Harris's Office, Bomber Command HQ
Following on from the two last posts on the critical role of photography in the Air War, I stumbled across this wartime press photograph of the head of Bomber Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, studying reconnaissance photographs using:…
More from the fascinating 1957 book Evidence in Camera. Wing Commander Peter Stewart was chosen to command a new Assistant Directorate of Photographic Intelligence in the summer of 1941. At this time reconnaissance photographs were showing how badly Bomber Command…
I always love it when all sorts of research threads link up unexpectedly. Last Sunday, I went to Goodrich, near Ross-on-Wye, for a talk about a radar aid called H2S and the tragic crash which killed its inventor, Alan Blumlein.…
I was flicking through Donald Bennett's autobiography Pathfinder yesterday, and came upon this passage, which seemed strangely reminiscent of a certain situation in the British Parliament today. Bennett is writing of the time that, having resigned from the Air Force,…
I have posted a new page about RAF graves at Kuinre on the AFTERMATH site this morning, which shows some of the most beautiful war graves I have ever seen. Currently the only rival I can think of to the beauty…
A vivid reminder of the terrible dangers of flying on bombing operations, where wounding from machine gun fire, flak fragments or burns from fires on board were an ever-present hazard. The kits were also used after air crashes. After my…
I recently bought this beautiful old Air Ministry publicity photograph of a member of aircrew on a Coastal Command Sunderland Flying Boat releasing a carrier pigeon. It was taken in 1942. I am posting more details of the role…
I wonder how many people caught up with the Powell and Pressburger film "A Matter of Life and Death" which was screened on the BBC last Sunday afternoon. Released in 1946, it tells the story of a Pathfinder pilot, Squadron…
The RAF’s inspiring motto, exact translation disputed but generally taken to mean Through Arduous Endeavour (or Adversity) to the Stars. Here pictured on the Cranwell gates, RAF Cranwell being the RAF’s premier college for training officers and aircrew.
The Mass RAF Funerals at Cambridge – a brief overview of the conditions on 16/17 December 1943 is followed by an illustrated account of the extraordinary mass funerals at Cambridge City Cemetery on 22 December 1943 when 20 Pathfinders, most…
The night of 16/17 December 1943, afterwards known as Black Thursday, saw the worst RAF bad weather losses of the whole war. A heavy fog caused severe problems for home-coming aircraft and there were multiple fatal crashes, amongst them the…
Like the Le Creusot raid of 17 October, the Milan raid of 24 October was flown in daylight. It is not entirely certain on which of the two operations this photograph and three other related photographs were taken, but the…
The photographs I have been working with on the funerals at Cambridge on 22 December 1943 have echoes for me of two funerals which took place in Canada the previous year. Both were for young Australians in training. Their friend…
The Le Creusot operation in daylight on 17 October 1942 was one of the most daring of several Bomber Command raids flown that year which were perhaps as much concerned with PR and morale as with military strategy. See: Le Creusot…
During the war, the exploits of Bomber Command were celebrated in all the mass media, including newspapers, newsreel, and radio. Although there were other equally dramatic operations, perhaps none captured the public's imagination so much as the Dams Raid of…
I am just finishing putting the finishing touches to two booklets related to Black Thursday and the night of 16/17 December 1943 when many RAF aircraft crashed due to thick fog. These are being done on behalf of the RAF…
This sort of sky and landscape would have been the last glimpse of England that many bomber crews saw as they left their airfields to fly to Occupied Europe and Germany. The twilight hour was the one which separated a…
This is the type of Station Sick Quarters accommodation, a Nissen hut, which would have been found on a wartime base such as Bourn or the fictional Ashby. The extremely basic nature of the building can be seen despite the…
This Station Sick Quarters ward is clearly on a station built in wartime. The pre-war stations had proper medical blocks, whereas those on the new wartime stations usually had to make do with Nissen huts. Here a Nissen hut has been…
