Memorializing RAF Bomber Command in the United Kingdom

Abstract

This article traces the ways in which RAF Bomber Command has been memorialized in the UK since the 1940s, focusing on those who have organized memorials and associated commemorations. Distinct phases can be identified. Until the 1970s, the Command was accorded a prominent role in official memorial and ceremonial activities. Veterans’ activities reflected this acknowledgement. From the 1980s, in the face of debates about the morality of area bombing of German cities, however, veterans’ organizations and families began to articulate the view that Bomber Command’s wartime contribution had been overlooked. In consequence, they embarked upon activities to revise official memory. This included distinctive forms of memorial activity on the part of veterans and the postmemory generation, including the widespread appearance of ‘small memorials’ and, in the twenty-first century, two large-scale memorial sites, in London and in Lincoln.

KEYWORDS:

• RAF Bomber Command
• memorials
• memorialization
• Bomber Command Association
• neglect narrative
• ancestral tourism

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Richard Overy, Mary Stuart, Dan Ellin, Alex Pesaro, Robin Evans, James Pugh, Clive Richards, Claire Hubbard-Hall and two anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier drafts.

Notes

1 This was not the first public museum or exhibition covering Bomber Command; Skyfame at Staverton, Cheltenham, and the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden, both very much ‘bottom-up’ initiatives, date to the 1960s. When Skyfame closed in the 1970s, much of its collection was absorbed into IWM Duxford (Body and Thomas n.d., Brew 2003).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Heather Hughes

Professor Heather Hughes of Cultural Heritage Studies, University of Lincoln; educated and has worked in South Africa and the UK; research interests in biography, heritage interpretation, the nature of archives.