Night after night in the cold black hostile skies above enemy-occupied Europe, a deadly war was waged between enemy forces on the ground, roving enemy night-fighter aircraft  and our allied bomber crews. Using complex state-of-the-art electronic counter-measures and human vigilance, remaining undetected was vital. Detection was almost always fatal and often, the first the bomber crews would know of their detection was the sudden burst of gunfire which would ripped their bomber apart.Equally deadly, were the  searchlights on the ground. These  could trap an aircraft in their beams-illuminating them for the flak guns or the night-fighters.

During the bombing campaign of the Second World War, the duties that the crews of Bomber Command were expected to undertake was considered so dangerous that the bomber crews were made up entirely of volunteers. Each man was obliged to complete a thirty- mission tour of operations. The life expectancy of a crew was just five operations. Given that aircrew training took two-years to complete and given that the crews were operating the most  sophisticated and reliable tool of war  devised to date-namely the Lancaster bomber, highlights just how hazardous and difficult bombing operations were.