1942 was a crucial year for the fortunes of Bomber Command The newly appointed Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief Sir Arthur Harris knew he had to show quickly that his Bomber Command could make a real difference to the war so with Churchill's blessing he set about planning a vast initial air attack by at least one thousand bombers This was over two & a half times larger than any previous raid by the RAF The first selected target Hamburg was dropped due to poor weather conditions & so it was Cologne which became the target of the colossal raid on the night of 30th May 1942 The success of that first raid was convincing while the two major follow up ' Thousand' raids on Essen & Bremen in June were less so but still emphatically put Bomber Command back on the military map This book is a testament to all those who flew with Bomber Command which lost 55000 of its members during the war