In The News

Monument to Bomber Command is approved

Monument to Bomber Command is approved

A permanent memorial to the heroes of Bomber Command in World War II is to be built.

The monument (see illustration), which will cost £3.5m, will be built at the Piccadilly entrance to Green Park in London.

The open-style pavilion will commemorate the 55,573 members of Bomber Command who lost their lives during the war. 

The average age of crew members was 22 and many died during daring raids on German targets, including airbases and factories.

The memorial will include inscriptions and carvings and part of the entrance will be made form the melted-down aluminium from a Halifax bomber in which all seven crew members died when it was shot down.

One of the inscriptions will be from a speech made by Winston Churchill in 1940 in which he told MPs: “The gratitude of every home in our island goes out to the British airmen who undaunted by odds, unweakened by their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of world war by their prowess and their devotion”.

The memorial will be built by 2012.

 

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