Bomber Command Kitbag: Aircrew Uniforms and Equipment from the RAF's Offensive over Europe in WWII

The scenes are familiar ones; the bomber crew climbs out of the transport that has delivered them to their aircraft, waiting for them out at the dispersal in the growing darkness. They gathers beneath its towering bulk, their breath clouding in the cold air. Oil and metal smells mix with damp grass as the groundcrew finish the last checks around them. The pilot and flight engineer confer by the ladder, rechecking details on a worn clipboard. The navigator cradles his charts, the bomb aimer glances toward the loaded bomb bay, thoughtful and quiet. Parachutes and other equipment are hoisted inside the cockpit and fuselage as the moment to fire up the engines draws nearer.

Around 125,000 aircrew served in RAF Bomber Command during the Second World War, a force comprising men from across the Commonwealth and occupied nations. The casual, if not nervous air of the crew as they wait by their bomber concealed a necessarily professional approach to their task of taking the offensive to Hitler’s Third Reich. Therefore, each item of clothing and equipment they wore and carried had a role and a function, be it for warmth and comfort, communication, or for fighting and survival.

All of the main and important objects that the members of a Bomber Command crew were issued with are revealed in this book in high-definition colour photographs, all supported by graphic first-hand accounts. Examine everything from the differing uniforms, to headgear, oxygen masks, gloves, goggles and life preservers, through to the essential items such as parachutes and heated flying suits. Each item is fully described and its purpose and use explained.

Fly with the Avro Lancaster or Handley Page Halifax crews in the dangerous skies over Europe, and see what they wore as they battled their foe in one of the deadliest campaigns of the Second World War.