Bomber Command Memorial

Above your heads right now, fragments of Halifax bomber LW682 shield these bronze airmen from the elements... the very aircraft that crashed in Belgium seventy-nine years ago, killing all eight crew members. When excavators found the wreckage in 1997, three airmen were still seated at their stations, frozen in time at the moment of impact on that terrible night of May 12th, 1944. You're standing before the last memorial of its kind - the final tribute to any Second World War fighting force. For sixty-seven years after the war ended, these 55,573 aircrew remained the ONLY British servicemen without public recognition, their sacrifice somehow too controversial to commemorate. Bomber Command's average age was just twenty-two, with boys as young as eighteen climbing into aircraft knowing that three out of every five would never return home. Architect Liam O'Connor designed this Portland stone sanctuary deliberately open to the sky, so natural light falls directly onto Philip Jackson's seven bronze figures representing a complete Lancaster bomber crew. As you walk around these classical columns facing both Piccadilly and Green Park, notice how the aircrew's silhouettes remain visible against the heavens above... day or night, they're forever airborne. Queen Elizabeth unveiled this seven-million-pound memorial during her Diamond Jubilee year, finally honoring the young men who carried the war directly to Germany's doorstep when Britain stood nearly alone.