August 19, 2024

Finest Hour 200, Fourth Quarter 2022

Page 48

Review by Michael Graydon

Sir Michael Graydon GCB CBE FRAeS retired from the RAF with the rank of Air Chief Marshal.

Roddy Mackenzie, Bomber Command: Churchill’s Greatest Triumph, Air World, 2022, 288 pages, £20. ISBN 978–1399017725

When offered the chance to read the draft of Roddy Mackenzie’s Bomber Command, I wondered if it would tell me anything new. It did. It traces the journey of its author, the son of a Canadian bomber pilot, in discovering his father’s war and how it had changed his life.

In so doing, the book provides a wealth of widely researched evidence including crucial information, from German research, which largely dispels the peddled ignorance that has clouded understanding of the strategic bombing campaign and the impact it had on the Nazi war effort. It wisely highlights the views of great soldiers such as Eisenhower, Brooke, Montgomery, and Horrocks—men who knew how Bomber Command was paving the way for the armies and thus saving countless allied lives. The strong relationship during the campaign between Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris and Prime Minister Winston Churchill is described well.

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The journey takes Mackenzie to many countries and contacts around the world; it makes good reading to learn how fruitful were his numerous visits to the UK and how helpful retired RAF personnel were, together with the RAF Cranwell Library and Cambridge University’s Churchill College. Great efforts have been made in the last twenty years to recognise the contribution of Bomber Command to victory in the Second World War and to compensate for the disgraceful treatment afforded its men and women at war’s end.

It is no surprise that Mackenzie is led to praise the bravery of Bomber Command aircrew and their achievements, and in that process to understand the impact that such prolonged stress can have on mental health. It is good, too, to be reminded of the magnificent contribution and commitment of Canada to the allied cause. Roddy Mackenzie’s comprehensive book is a fine tribute to a remarkable generation, but it offers much more than a trawl of history. In revealing the mental scars that war brought to his father, it will, I hope, provide some closure to other families who have experienced its consequences.