Tonight at 9 on BBC One:

Duration: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Brothers Colin and Ewan McGregor follow up their documentary The Battle of Britain with a film exploring Bomber Command, a rarely-told story from the Second World War.

The film focuses primarily on the men who fought and died in the skies above occupied Europe, with numerous examples of individual heroism and extraordinary collective spirit, and Colin learns to fly the key aircraft of the campaign: the Lancaster bomber. But this is also the story of a controversy that has lasted almost 70 years.

The programme covers six years of wartime operations, and traces the obstacles and challenges that were overcome as the RAF developed and deployed the awesome fighting force that was Bomber Command. < Show less

Brothers Colin and Ewan McGregor follow up their documentary The Battle of Britain with a film exploring Bomber Command, a rarely-told story from the Second World War.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00nr7gf

Thanks! Recording...

Thanks Jens. I've already commandeered the box.

Nice one McGonigle, I was just about to post a heads up for people myself but you beat me to it! Looks like it could be good. Auto channel change has been on since this afternoon heheh.

For those who don't know, Ewans brother Colin is a former RAF Tornado pilot.

Tak! Jeg optager.

Crap,I would have missed this,thanks McGonigle

They first time I met them I thought they're a nice pair, very easy going and not at all what I was expecting. Last year just re-enforced that view. Would have liked to have seen the program but she who must be obeyed has the remote...

Maybe you can catch it on iPlayer Harry?

Extremely little about the Lancaster in that show, quite a lot about the old guys who flew it and very much about the McGregor brothers... All rounded off with some confused comments about area bombing and what to think about it. Meh.

Well, it was called 'Bomber Boys' so it's not that surprising. I thought it was a very well made programme.

Getting closer.

Bloody iPlayer isn't available to people outside the UK


Look at this little clip though. The lucky git gets to chuck the Lanc around the skies. Check out his grin when he takes over the controls. I am full of envy!

Luck buggers! I'll have to watch out on BBCA and see if they run it.

'Meh'??!! Frey, it was one the best documentaries I've seen for a long time....It was excellent! Strewth, some people eh? Never happy.
Would you mind explaining what was 'confused' about the pilots thoughts on area bombing, for example? Some expressed some regret, others had no remorse whatsoever.....they made their views very clear, there was no 'confusion' to speak of. I wouldn't say there was 'extremely little' about the Lancaster at all. Pilots were frequently heard talking about its flight characteristics, and their experiences in combat with it. Navigation methods were also explained and demonstrated. There was even a .303 gunnery test on the exact type of Hun armour used to illustrate how the Lancaster gunners had great difficulty penetrating it effectively, and how hits on critical areas were needed to down Luftwaffe planes.

I also liked the fact that survivors of the Hamburg firestorms were interviewed in Germany, as well as a German Night fighter Me 110 ace explaining how he downed Lancasters and even seeing his original log book etc. The Hamburg interviews were quite harrowing actually. The training parts Colin underwent for heavy bomber flying were also good. I'm at a complete loss as to what was 'meh' about it.

Oh well. No accounting for taste I suppose, hehe. You're still wrong though man, it was bloody good!

Only the much maligned 'Auntie Beeb' can deliver on programmes of this nature.

'Oi'll give it foive' as a young Janice Nicholls used to say.

Some classic one liners...

On VD;

'A blob on the nob slows demob!'

On the Lanc;

'Like all ladies, if you treat 'em right, they go.'

I sort of think I understand what you mean Frey.

I mean it was a great programme for a very cursory overview of Bomber Command during the War, but for Bomber Command scholars there was precious little detail and no new information. The finale with the Lanc in flight was short (too short for my taste) but sweet.

Still, it was well worth a watch.

Biggles, the confusion I refer to was mostly the hapless remarks from the presenters, not the air crew. "Eh yeah, the flight crews are definitely still my heroes, but ehhh, I don't really know what to think of the bombing campaign, ehh, I think"... - Politically correct babble about "bombing civilians is ALWAYS wrong, always a crime"... - Eh, sorry, but it isn't. You are well in your right to strike at any part of a crazed, invading, murderous (on an industrial scale) nation that is in a struggle to the death with your own country.

Also way too little footage of the Lancaster flight which was supposedly the reason for the whole programme. I thought the BoB programme by the McGregors was much better. Probably because they weren't faced with any philosophical conundrums in that show.

Right, got you Frey and point taken. Ewan is a movie star, not Immanuel Kant lol....fair enough. That was a 2 minute part of a 90 minute documentary. I thought it responsible and appropriate for the BBC to at least acknowledge that there is controversy over the subject, and different viewpoints as to the 'morality' or otherwise of area bombing civilians with incenderies. Its not unusual for people to feel conflicted about it, even the pilots themselves. One saying 'I felt bad about it in many respects, but yet war isn't Marquess of Queensbury rules. Of course immediately after the war we got the screens of what happened in the concentration and extermination camps....And I suppose it rather hardens ones heart'.

I think most sane people would agree that bombing children with incendiaries can never be a 'good' thing, but war is what it is I suppose, hell. I can see both viewpoints, but for my part and for what its worth.....as harsh as it sounds I tend to agree with your assessment. War to state the blindingly obvious is not a 'nice' business, and are not won by being 'nice'. Easy for the likes of us to say though who were not there. As a human being though of course I feel sympathy for innocent people, and I would say this is a consequence of being Human (Thank God), not being 'Politically correct'. I hope that is one thing that never changes for me personally.

I think we flight sim/aviation and history nuts probably have a tendency to be hyper-critical about these programs, perhaps forgetting that they are intended for a much broader audience. What is 'obvious' to us is not so obvious to others hehe. The vast majority of people don't have our level of interest in these things.

What I did find interesting was the way it has influenced modern day RAF Protocol and practice. In conclusion, I still think it was a well done program , and competently presented overall. We can agree to disagree though I suppose.

These programmes are never going to satisfy the SimHQ crowd, I think. They have to generalise to capture the casual audience.

The bombing campaign stuff can't be properly covered in the few minutes debate they had and the further we get from those times the less people understand the Total War concept and everything it means.

I've always been intrigued by the possibility of the RAF finishing what Harris started and how Europe would've turned out if Germany was effectively bought to it's knees months before D-Day.

Can't help thinking of the civilian casualties, though.

This is really the crux of the matter. Whether we're talking about a theatrical release like "Red Tails" or we're talking about a tv show, we always need to be cognizant of the fact that they are made for mainstream audiences and not history/military flight sim afficionados.


As for the controversy about bombing civilians, I fully agree with your viewpoint Biggles. War is hell and there will always be innocent civilians killed unfortunately.

Good programme but WHY OH WHY the overbearing music!!? Ain't 4 Merlins at full chat music enough?
Ewan McG not being a luvvie and hogging the limelight was good....seems to be a genuine affection and respect between the brothers.

If one disposed to high blood pressure, don't read comments on TV points of view type forums.....needless to say but much bandying about 'Dreseden, unjustified, glorification, biased' and other pc views. As one of the chaps speaking last night summed it up 'they bleedin' well started it didn't they?'
All missed the point; this was a tribute to the plane, the crews that flew, fought and fell. And the people that built and maintained the Lanc.
Many other programmes have been made of the dark side of the bomber campaign.

That was the comment made while they were in Hamburg, 'If they had bombed another 6 cities like what they had done to Hamburg it would have brought Germany to it's knees.'

Bomber Command did lose 55,000 aircrew during the war. What can one do, another country has attacked you and your friends and is bent on destroying you and your way of life, you and your friends are going to fight back with everything you have. Well that is "our" point of view, here I have been talking with friends in Belgium and they have a diffrent philosophy in that they have been conquered many many times by many diffrent foes. Here they offer token resistance and wait it out as another conqueror will be along shortly. (so says my Belgian wife )

Great posts here.

War is the complete breakdown of civilisation, so in my opinion it does not make sense to try to apply a morality filter with 20-20 hindsight. It was a struggle for life and death, Nazism had to be annihilated with every possible means that was thought to be at disposal, and intelligence about the capabilities of the opponent was not always correct either.

War is horrible. Period.

One thought that struck me though, was that if one thinks that the strategic bombing concept failed, that Bomber Command did not suffice to bring Nazi Germany to surrender, it was perhaps because the fulfilment of the doomsday prophesies about the devastation and terror bombers could deliver, was achieved only with the atomic bomb.

IMHO, the contributions of strategic bombing to the final Allied victory in WWII are overrated. No amount of bombing (short of atomic bombs) would have made Germany surrender. What made Germany surrender was a Red Army of over 2 million men surrounding and all over Berlin.

Some have over-rated it but the Allied bombing campaign is now generally seen as a major contribution to victory rather than, as Harris had hoped, the decisive weapon. IMHO, the invasion in June 1944 and consequently the Red Army in Berlin as early as April 1945 would not have been possible without that contribution which resulted in enormous destruction to the German war effort.

If you destroy the workforce, the factories etc. then you stop the ability of your enemy to replace what it looses in combat, shortly they run out of ammo, weapons and equipment. Britain was on the edge of running out of a lot of supplies through out the war it was only with the help of the allies they managed to prevail.

The area where I come from was hit by the blitz fairly hard, my mother lived through it, my father was working in one of the Clyde shipyards that was being targeted by the Luftwaffe at that time.

It is basically impossible to gauge the effect of the bombing scientifically because we don't know what WOULD have happened without it. Counter-factual history it is called, i.e. an alternative course of events. But we are never going to get closer to the truth like that, so it basically doesn't make sense to purport that we can find an answer to the issue...

Did you know that Germany reached the peak of its industry capacity in 1944? Germany built more tanks, aircraft, artillery pieces and other armaments compared to any other year and by 1944 the US daylight and UK night-time strategic bombing campaings were already in full force.

Yes, amazing isn't it. It mainly shows that Germany only prepared for a Blitzkrieg in 1939. Typical of Hitler's short-term outlook. Germany wasn't working anywhere near capacity before Speer took over production and Göbbels announced Der Totaler Krieg.

History is full of examples where a nation went to war assuming that it would end quickly with the "boys coming home by Christmas". Hitler's assumption that France and the UK wouldn't go to war over Poland was the first major miscalculation but the even deadlier and costlier assumption was that the USSR would be defeated in a couple of months.

Something else that didn't help them - The Nazi idea of total war wasn't.