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 anti-aircraft or cannon fire which ripped their bomber apart or the equally deadly searchlights on the ground which would trap an aircraft in their beams.

During the bombing campaign of the Second World War, the crews of Bomber Command 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 the crews were operating the most sophisticated and reliable tool of war ever devised to date-namely the Lancaster bomber and given that the training took two-years to complete and cost the equivalent of sending ten people to Oxford or Cambridge for three-years, highlights just how hazardous and difficult bombing operations were.