RAF Bomber Command controlled the RAF's bomber forces from 1936 to 1968. When the Second World War started, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the then-neutral United States, asked the major belligerents to confine their air raids to military targets; however following the German Rotterdam Blitz of 14 May 1940, RAF Bomber Command was authorised to attack German targets east of the Rhine. Later in the War the command destroyed a significant proportion of Nazi Germany's industries notably in the Ruhr valley and many German cities including Cologne and Dresden in 1945. The raids caused the loss of up to 600,000 civilian lives. Bomber Command crews suffered extremely high casualty rates and RAF Bomber Command had 19 Victoria Cross recipients.
Bomber Command stood at the peak of its post-war military power in the 1960s, the V bombers holding the United Kingdom's nuclear deterrent and a supplemental force of Canberra light bombers.
In August 2006, a memorial was unveiled at Lincoln Cathedral. A memorial in Green Park in London was unveiled by the Queen on 28 June 2012 to highlight the price paid by the aircrews.
Read more about RAF Bomber Command: History 1936–1945, History: 1946 To 1968, Commanders-in-Chief, Battle Honours, Memorials
Famous quotes containing the word command:
“Under bare Ben Bulben’s head
In Drumcliff churchyard Yeats is laid.
An ancestor was rector there
Long years ago, a church stands near,
By the road an ancient cross.
No marble, no conventional phrase;
On limestone quarried near the spot
By his command these words are cut:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman pass by!”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)