Notes

  1  This and all subsequent raid details from Martin Middlebrook and Chris Everitt, The Bomber Command War Diaries: An operational reference book 1939–1945 (Leicester: Midland Publishing, 2000).

  2  Martin Gilbert (ed.), The Churchill War Papers: Volume II: Never Surrender, May 1940–December 1940 (London: Macmillan, 1994), pp. 17–18, 24–6, 38–43.

  3  See Mark Connelly, ‘The British People, the Press and the Strategic Air Campaign Against Germany, 1939–1945’, Contemporary British History, 16 (2002), pp. 39–58.

  4  Richard Overy, The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945 (London: Allen Lane, 2013), pp. 547–56.

  5  The National Archive (TNA), Kew, London, AIR 20/25, Air Intelligence to Directorate of Bomber Operations, 23 May 1941. On the decision to shift to bombing workers and their milieu see Richard Overy, ‘The “Weak Link”?: Bomber Command and the German Working Class, 1940–1945’, Labour History Review, 77 (2012), pp. 11–34.

  6  TNA, AIR 41/41, RAF Narrative, ‘The RAF in the Bombing Offensive Against Germany: Vol. III, Area Bombing and the Makeshift Force’, appendix C.

  7  TNA, AIR 22/37, Air Ministry War Room Daily Returns, Strength of Aircraft July–Sept 1941.

  8  TNA, AIR 22/203, War Room Manual of Bomber Command Operations 1939–1945, p. 20.

  9  TNA, AIR 49/357, E.C. Jewesbury, ‘Work and Problems of an RAF Neuropsychiatric Centre’, July 1943, pp. 2–4, 10.

10  Ibid., pp. 11–13. See too Edgar Jones, ‘“LMF”: The Use of Psychiatric Stigma in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War’, Journal of Military History, 70 (2006), pp. 440–44, 452; and Allan D. English, ‘A Predisposition to Cowardice? Aviation Psychology and the Genesis of “Lack of Moral Fibre”’, War & Society, 13 (1995), pp. 15–34.

11  Mark Wells, Courage and Air Warfare: The Allied Air Crew Experience in the Second World War (London: Frank Cass, 1995), pp. 204–5.

12  Air Force Historical Records Agency, Maxwell AFB, Alabama, Disc A5385, Eighth Air Force, Growth, Development and Operations, Combat Crew Casualties.

13  Neville Wylie, ‘Muted Applause? British Prisoners of War as Observers and Victims of the Allied Bombing Campaign over Germany’ in Claudia Baldoli, Andrew Knapp, and Richard Overy (eds), Bombing, States and Peoples in Western Europe, 1940–1945 (London: Continuum, 2011), pp. 256–78.

14  Leslie Mann to Joan Mann, 22 June 1941. Quotations from Leslie Mann’s letters courtesy of Christopher Mann.

15  Leslie Mann to Joan Mann, n.d. but postmarked 30 June 1941.

16  Leslie Mann to Joan Mann, 6 February 1942 from Stalag IX-C.

17  Leslie Mann to Joan Mann, 24 April 1942. A few weeks before he had written ‘I’d be happy if I thought I’d see you this year’.

18  Leslie Mann to Joan Mann, 3 August 1943.