"This is the last truly great memorial of the two World Wars that needs to be built – and it needs to be built before it's too late. We owe these courageous men a debt of gratitude, for without them we wouldn’t be enjoying the freedom that we have today."
Robin Gibb, President of the Heritage Foundation
The Bomber Command Association, with the help of the Heritage Foundation, is raising funds to erect a permanent memorial in Central London to the 55,573 bomber aircrew killed in WW2. Architect Liam O'Connor has been chosen to design the memorial, best known for the design and construction of the Commonwealth Memorial Gates on Constitution Hill, near Buckingham Palace. The Bomber Command memorial will be a fitting tribute to those who gave everything so that we may be free today. And it will help generations to come understand, in some small way, the heavy price that was paid by those who felt that freedom was worth fighting and dying for.
The memorial in detail
The memorial will be built to be modern, yet classical, in Portland stone with bronze sculptures. Within the memorial, the space is open to the sky with an opening designed to allow light to fall directly onto the central sculpture. This sculpture will be set on a 1.5 metre black Basalt plinth. The height of the plinth and the scale of the sculpture as a whole means that visitors will always see the profile of the figure against the sky above them, day and night, thus rendering that section of the sky powerfully symbolic for the memorial.
The design for the roof will be made from sections of melted down aluminium from a Halifax bomber (Halifax LW682 from No. 426 squadron) shot down over Belgium on the night of 12 May 1944, in which 8 crew were killed. Three members of the crew; John Summerhayes (mid upper-gunner), Fred Roach (tail gunner) and Wilbur Bentz (pilot). They were buried with ll military honours alongside the five other members of the crew.
The two flank walls of the inner part of the memorial will also be in large blocks of Portland stone and will have central niches cut into the masses of the walls and contain cast bronze lamps that provide a general overall soft level of illumination during winter days and evenings.
Flanking the niches will be carved, into the stone walls, depictions of the principle aircraft of the RAF Bomber Command such as the Mosquito, Wellington, Halifax, Bristol Blenheim and the Lancaster and the badges of those squadrons who flew these planes.
These depictions will provide an educational element within the memorial and serve to remind visitors of the extraordinary leaps in design and technology that occurred during the six years of the Second World War.
Above these will be a series of key quotations, including:
"The fighters are our salvation but the bombers are our means of victory…"
Winston Churchill, 1940
"This memorial is dedicated to the 55,573 volunteer aircrew of Bomber Command who lost their lives during the Second World War"
Dedication inscription
One of the key reasons for siting the Memorial in London is that the city owes its comparative safety from aerial bombardment during World War II, to Bomber Command. Their continued offensive throughout the war ensured that the battle was fought over Nazi Germany and that their aircraft production was focused with producing the fighters needed to defend Germany from our bombers – and not bombers with which to attack the cites of the United Kingdom.
During the past two centuries a cluster of memorials has arisen that has defined the character of Hyde Park and Green Park. Each one, in its way, remembering the actions of those who have fought for the Commonwealth for a variety of Forces, from the Royal Artillery Memorial, to the monument, to the Machine Gun Corps.
Not only will the Bomber Command memorial be in good company, but it will finally be recognising a debt of gratitude that has been ignored for far too long.