Changes

DC: I do feel strongly about it. The shabby way in which Bomber Command was treated actually began before the end of the war, when Churchill distanced himself from the allied bombing campaign even though Air Marshall Harris was carrying out his orders. But I think about how the bomber crews, ordinary men, sometimes still in their teens, were the only effective way the allies could carry the war into Germany in 1942 and 1943 in particular, in awful conditions and with the most appalling losses - proportionately higher than in any other theatre of the war - and I marvel at how they could do it at all. It must have been absolutely terrifying. After the war, most bomber crews felt let-down, to put it mildly, by the Government and tended to keep to themselves.

DC: It wasn't just the pilots who were exposed to radiation in Operation Grapple, thousands of British servicemen were. This has now become a newsworthy event, here and in Australia, but the British Government still seem to take the tack that not enough was known about the effects of radiation at the time. I find this unlikely not least because of Britain's part in the Manhattan Project developing the atomic bomb in the Second World War, not to mention the high profile Britain's physicists had in this field for many years before. Why isn't so much known about this sort of institutionalised deceit? Well, I suppose the misuse of the Official Secrets Act probably has a lot to do with it.