Avro Lancaster

Behind every aircraft that flew over the occupied Netherlands was a crew of individuals with names, homes, and lives outside of the war. For the seven men who operated an Avro Lancaster, every mission was a confrontation with the possibility that they might not return. The statistics of RAF Bomber Command were ruthless: during the peak of the strategic bombing campaign, a crew member had less than a fifty percent chance of surviving their required thirty missions.
A Lancaster crew consisted of the pilot, the navigator, the bomb aimer, the flight engineer, and three gunners who operated the machine guns in the nose, the fuselage, and the tail. Most were young, in their early twenties, hailing from Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other Commonwealth nations. Some had never flown before the war broke out. After several months of intensive training, they found themselves in an aircraft that had to fly hundreds of kilometers through enemy airspace, in the dark, in freezing temperatures at high altitudes, under fire from anti-aircraft guns and attacked by German night fighters.
Lancaster crews flew over the Netherlands on their way to Germany or on missions over the occupied territory itself. When a plane was shot down, crew members sometimes had only seconds to decide whether they could bail out. Those who succeeded and survived the landing found themselves in the middle of enemy territory. Some were captured immediately. Others went into hiding with the help of the Dutch resistance, concealed in haystacks, attics, and cellars by people who risked their own lives to save a stranger.
That connection between the Lancaster crews above and the ordinary Dutch citizens below is one of the most human stories of the occupation’s history. Men who had never met, bound by a shared enemy and the willingness of a few to risk everything for another.