RAF 14 The W R Chorley Records

Royal Air Force

RAF Bomber Command Losses 1939-1945

The W R Chorley Nine Volume Set

I

THE CHORLEY SERIES on Bomber Command Losses covers the entire Second World War, superbly compiled, widening perspectives of the enquiring reader and researcher alike. The full 9-10 volume set enables me to obtain something of the impact - I use that adjective carefully - upon those who were on the ‘receiving end’.

Despite two uncles being KIA over Germany in 1943 and 1945 respectively, this did not 'colour' the attitude of their siblings, my parents, who made sure that I and my sisters visited Austria with school trips in the 1960s, and with my own continuing journeys to Germany both with the RAF VR but also privately, because I enjoy being in Germany.

My parents’ loss had given each of them the reason for finding 'someone to talk to' and which in turn led to 63 years of very happy marriage.

This, in turn, led to my own very close and deep association with the German People.

II

We are the generation that came immediately post-war, and in the 21st Century, it is difficult to comprehend the influence that six years of war had on the post-war generation, akin to the pebble in a pool, so that we were still affected by that war twenty, thirty, fifity and seventy years on.

The Chorley Volumes are now more important than ever; especially when film directors have us all believe that the most horrendous outcomes in every genreis just a scratch, a mere shake of dust, from which one then gets up and carries on.

Real war is not like that and I write as one who held the Queen's Commission in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, albeit it in peacetime.

III

The Chorley Set must be protected and always made available; for the Second World War is now fast fading into long-distant history. That is inevitable. Talking with young people at university in February 2026, the reaction is always in the eyes. Blankness. An inability to conjure up a modicum of interest. This is the fault of the post war generation and that generation’s children.

The records, however, live on. We learn from them. In that regard, we are not doing well. When I wrote this I gave the example of Allepo. In 2026, the example is Ukraine Russia War and the Israel Gaza War.

I recommend Chorley to any person who is undergoing a serious study of the Strategic Air Offensive and also of air war generally.

If visiting RAF Cranwell I would not be silent if I discovered that the complete Chorley set is not available to students. But it also enables me to think about the impact of air war on all sides, the aircrews and ground crews, the civilian populations that, without choice or voice, are in the front line.

In countless historical biographies and battlefield re-enactments, it is as if the writer sees only through the eyes of the chess player. Set pieces on a board. Cities and towns apparently emptied, and cleared, so the protagonists can slog it out. As we know from Russia and Assad in Syria, the cities Houla and Aleppo, and now Russia in the War in Ukraine, the port city of Mariupol, Kharkiv, and Kherson, the people are in situ, and the People of Gaza and the Lebanon and of the West Bank. Likewise Israel both on 7 October 2023 and then in 2025 on the receiving end of Iran.

The Chorley series also includes a volume recording the losses within the Heavy Conversion Units. The entries make for sober reading. We often read that personnel, having completed a tour of operations, would often become flying instructors before returning to a futher tour of operations. The training units make it quite clear, flying instructors as well as students were all too often killed.

IV

For most of my life, the losses in Bomber Command were invariably fixed at 55,573 aircrew personnel killed. In 2021, this is rightly revised, and I quote a Wikipedia source:

(a) 57,205 killed (a 46 per cent death rate), plus

(b) 8,403 wounded, plus

(c) 9,838 thereby becoming prisoners of war (POWs)

This totals 75,446 aircrew personnel (60 per cent of operational airmen of all ranks) either killed, wounded or taken prisoner.

This is just one Command of the Royal Air Force and the Commonwealth Air Forces, all of which were grouped into a single Bomber Command for the period 1936-1968.

This does not include those killed, wounded or captured in any of the other RAF Commands.

A cautionary note, however, is required regarding the Wikipedia source.

Wikipedia is open to all. I am, therefore, inclined towards the official figure of 55,573, although readers might be interested to investigate the probable higher figure of 57,205 as reported by Wikipedia contributors.

The Full 9-Volume Set
Royal Air Force
BOMBER COMMAND
LOSSES
of the Second World War

Volume 11939 - 1940

Volume 2 1941

Volume 3 1942

Volume 4 1943

Volume 5 1944

Volume 6 1945

Volume 7 Operational Training Units 1940 -1947

Volume 8 Heavy Conversion Units and Miscellaneous Units 1939 - 1947

Volume 9 Roll of Honour 1939 -1947

David Gunby and Pelham Temple have compiled a separate Set following the Chorley Precedent.

Royal Air Force
BOMBER LOSSES
IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND
MEDITERRANEAN

Volume 1 1939 - 1942

22 February 2026
All Rights Reserved


Gloucestershire and Liverpool

© 2021 Kenneth Thomas Webb

Written 15 July 2021

Lest We Forget

Simply an artistic depiction of a mid-air collision I felt inclined to produce. It was enough to go this far. Reading through the reports, I decided to stop at this point because the mid-air collision I refer to within the artwork happened in the dead of night. It is, though, in tribute to the fourteen lives lost on those two Avro Lancasters that night. KTW 2 January 2023.