Bomber County: The Lost Airmen of World War Two

Daniel Swift

Hamish Hamilton / Penguin Books (2011)

Lincolnshire was nicknamed “Bomber County” during World War II because of the many airfields built there during the war. From these airfields, Daniel Swift’s grandfather flew many missions into Europe. He died on the return leg of a bombing raid when his bomber was intercepted by a German night fighter and shot down into the Dutch IJsselmeer in 1943. Swift has tried to reconstruct his grandfather’s career and experiences from family documents, official records, and the notes and logbooks of the other bomber pilots.

The book is a little confused in that it contains a parallel storyline where Swift tries to disprove the statement that World War II produced none of the great poetry or literature of World War I. This is understandable as he is an English Literature teacher and well qualified to make the comparison, but it makes it hard for the reader to follow the narrative of his grandfather when a chunk of poetry intrudes. The book was originaly released as Bomber County: The Poetry of a Lost Pilot's War. This was possibly a more accurate description as Swift often provides the life story of the poets rather than the bombers.

He .writes a detective story as he pieces together the little bits and pieces of his grandfather’s history, from his prewar interest in flying to the discovery of his body washed up on the Dutch shore in 1943 a week after his aircraft and crew disappeared. The efforts of the Dutch people to honour the men who died over their country is simply incredible. They estimate that there are still about 1500 aircraft lost in the waters around the country. Their efforts at recovery and identification are well detailed in the documentary One Of Our Aircraft Is No Longer Missing. It would have been appropriate to include more detail on the recovery and identification efforts.

There is a tremendous amount of detail in the story and this serves to give a wider and more accurate picture of the dangers and the boredom in the life of a bomber crew. Much of the detail has been taken from the writings and records of other pilots, but Swift is probably quite correct in assuming that the experience of one echoes the experience of the others. He includes interviews with surviving crew members and with the victims of the bombing. He also mentions the reasons for and the ultimate benefits of the saturation bombing and firebombing of major cities, an area often forgotten. Analysis after the war showed that civilians in lightly bombed cities were just as demoralised as the victims in, say, Dresden. This raises the question of whether the maximum bombing effort and the loss of lives on both sides was really worth it. Swift reflects on what the typical crewman’s reaction may have been had these results been known during the bombing campaign.

The victims of the London Blitz also receive due consideration. Given the German analysis it may explain why the Londoners stoically put up with the nightly bombings for so long – they simply reached the point where they couldn’t change it so they just put up with it. Morale can only sink so far. The writings he uses to illustrate this section sometimes seem a little divorced from reality.

Although I thought the poetry and history would each stand on their own and seem a bit awkward when combined, Swift has given us a wide range of viewpoints from his meticulous research. Rather than a book on bomber poetry, I felt it worked better as a history of the flying life of a typical bomber pilot and those people his work affected. The poetry of which Swift is so fond is often a little clumsy, but mostly it serves to illustrate the story. The book is not so much a history as a very personal insight on the pilots and crew, of whom his grandfather was a typical example.

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This review will appear in Volume 4 No. 3 of the digital and print edition of Synergy.

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