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The Bomber Command Memorial at Green Park in London.

RAF Bomber Command

On August 20, 1940 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave a famous speech to the House of Commons where he remarked on the bravery of the Royal Air Force and the resilience of the British people. The most famous line from this speech is

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

Churchill was talking about the fighter pilots who fought off the Luftwaffe during the battle of Britain. Without air superiority, the German army could not launch their planned invasion of Britain. Many people forget the words Churchill spoke next. 

“We must never forget that all the time, night after night, month after month, our bomber squadrons travel far into Germany, find their targets in the darkness by the highest navigational skill, aim their attacks, often under the heaviest fire, often with serious loss, with deliberate careful discrimination, and inflict shattering blows upon the whole of the technical and war-making structure of the Nazi power. On no part of the Royal Air Force does the weight of the war fall more heavily than on the bombers.”

This was the job of Bomber Command. It was relentless, brutal and dangerous. Just under 50% of the men who flew with Bomber Command died. Despite their bravery, their work was downplayed after the war. Once the total cost of the war was counted, the military strategy of area bombing had inflicted devastating numbers of casualties across Europe. 

War is always terrible. In Heart in the Clouds I don’t mean to celebrate their destructive work, vital as it was to defeating the Nazis. I mean to illuminate it. To take the reader inside a Bomber Command station, inside an Avro Lancaster, and inside the head of a pilot grappling with meaning in what he does each night.

RAAF 467 Squadron

Although Alec and his crew are of my own making, their squadron was real. It was formed in November 1942 and disbanded in 1945, so this number represents a very specific time in history. Under Royal Australian Air Force control, the squadron featured airmen from Britain and the rest of the Commonwealth, including New Zealand and Canada.

RAAF pilots with Bomber Command in WWII had to fly thirty operations to complete their flying tour. In Heart in the Clouds, Alec is counting down the operations until he finishes his tour. But, he eventually agrees to do another tour and is selected for Squadron X. History buffs will know that the famous 617 “Dambusters” Squadron was formed so hastily it didn’t have a number and was originally called Squadron X. All of the characters in Heart in the Clouds are imaginary, except for Wing Commander Guy Gibson, whom Alec travels to RAF Scampton to meet.

The Air Transport Auxiliary

Eagle-eyed readers may notice an historical inaccuracy in the form of Birdie Bates, the ATA pilot who gives Maggie the advice to let Alec “reap the whirlwind”. Birdie is one of my favourite creations. In fact, she is the heroine in a story I have out on submission! (Easter Egg: those of you who paid very close attention in Finishing School might realise that Birdie Bates and Grace Deroy were Amy Snee’s debating team-mates at school.)

Although women did fly with the ATA and 11 of those women were licensed to fly Lancasters at the end of the war, they didn’t start flying that aircraft until 1944. However, I just couldn’t resist having Birdie fly onto the scene in one, even though it was 1942. Apologies to the purists.

Have you got any questions about the history in Heart in the Clouds? I love talking about the history behind the book! So feel free to reach out via the contact page and ask. 

Tea, Rum, Spice

RNZAF Pilot Officer Allan Fisher, 1944

Pilot Officer Allan Fisher, RNZAF

My grandfather grew up on a dairy farm in Manunui on the North Island of New Zealand. Family lore says that he enlisted in order to escape his farm life, and his particularly mean older brother. He train as a pilot in NZ and Australia with the Empire Air Training Scheme and ended up being posted overseas. He was en route to Singapore when it fell to the Japanese Imperial Forces, and so ended up in Lincolnshire, England flying with a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) 467 squadron. Like Alec in Heart in the Clouds, he was an enlisted pilot, who was offered a commission during his tour. However, he was medically discharged in 1944 due to persistent bronchitis.

Bomber Command

For pilots like him, life at Bomber Command lurched between downright terrifying and utterly banal. Some nights he was just a regular guy at the pub. Some nights (after the US entered the war, the RAF only flew operations at night) he flew in dark, sub-zero conditions.

He and his crew of six others flew low and slow, often through heavy enemy fire until they reached their target. The hulking aircraft was sluggish and hard to manoeuvre when it was laden with explosives. Once the bombs were gone, the pilots often had to hold steady for thirty seconds to check the bombs hit their targets, still under enemy fire. Only then, could they take evasive action and high tail home.

It was treacherous work. Half the men who flew with Bomber Command died. The ones that didn’t watched many of their friends fall from the sky. The survival rate was so dire that all the surviving pilots like my grandfather received Distinguished Flying Crosses at the end of the war – just for getting through. None of the men flying had any say in the targets or technologies used, but many who survived lived with the guilt of having done some morally questionable things, like drop incendiary bombs on sleeping civilians. 

In Australia, we often think about the trench warfare of WWI or the doomed offensive at Gallipoli as epitomising the waste of human life, but I think it applies to Bomber Command as well. These men were young: 18 and 19 years old, in the early twenties at best. Perhaps the losses weren’t as stark as in WWI, but it still moves me beyond words to think of the lives cut short in their prime or indelibly affected during those years.

So many ‘unknown warriors’

My grandfather’s story is just one of many. And it’s the sheer number of stories like his that fascinate and inspire me to write about this period. Those years in the 1940s were a period of global change, of massive movement of people around the globe, of people taking on new jobs, of women stepping out of the home and gaining independence, of courage on every level, of cowardice too.

All parts of life in all parts of the world were affected by this truly global conflict. Asia, Africa, Europe. The impact of war was felt everywhere thanks to the ambitions of the Axis powers for total world domination. 

As a writer, this sets my imagination on fire! 

My brain almost short circuits at the number of possibilities….”Submarine attacks in Sydney Harbour? There’s a romance in that for sure…What? Hitler had a wine cellar full of the looted French wines? I must write about that…You’re kidding! There was a secret map-making facility in a Buckinghamshire country house that no one knew about until the 1990s? Best. Setting. Ever.”

In fact, I will probably never write every WWII story that I have in my ideas file because almost every sentence I read about it inspires some idea for epic conflict, tension or romance!

Heart in the Clouds

My grandfather’s experience during the war inspired the setting for my first book, Heart in the Clouds. I wanted to honour my grandfather’s experience by representing life on a Bomber Command Air Station. My hero, Alec Thomas, is a Lancaster pilot who looks like Clark Gable (just like I think my Grandfather did). He lives that terrible see-saw between terror and banality and it wears at his soul.

He has complete confidence in his own abilities – in the air and with women! – until a WAAF Radio Operator causes him to question everything. You can read more about my first book is this series here or stay in touch with the book’s path to publication by signing up to my newsletter below.