The only Bomber Command operation on this day was the first sortie of the newly formed 1409 (Meteorological) Flight, based at Oakington. One Mosquito, crewed by Flight Lieutenant P. Cunliffe-Lister and Sergeant J. Boyle, made a weather reconnaissance flight to Brittany in preparation for the Bomber Command raids to be carried out in the coming night. The Mosquito returned safely.
1409 Flight operated until the end of the war, flying 1,364 sorties on 632 days. Only 3 Mosquitoes were lost during this period. Although all these sorties were under Bomber Command control, it will not be practicable to list every sortie in this diary or to include them in the periodic statistical summaries.
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ST-NAZAIRE/LORIENT
55 mixed aircraft to St-Nazaire and 47 to Lorient in the last raids on these French ports. Bomber Command was released from the obligation to bomb these targets 3 days later. 1 Lancaster was lost from the St-Nazaire raid.
The only report available from France says that the local fire-brigade headquarters at St-Nazaire was hit and 1 person was wounded. Both towns were now largely deserted by their former civilian populations.
33 aircraft laid mines off the southern part of the Biscay coast. 1 Lancaster lost.
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; these further figures were not included in the periodic statistics. For reasons of convenience, it has been assumed that all the Resistance Operations were flown at night and those of the Met Flight by day.)
Number of nights with operations: 1,481 (71.4 percent of all nights in the war)
Number of days with operations: 1,089 (52.5 percent of all days in the war)
Number of night sorties: 307,253, from which 7,953 aircraft (2.6 percent) were lost
Number of day sorties: 80,163, from which 1,000 aircraft (1.2 percent) were lost
Total sorties: 387,416, from which 8,953 aircraft (2.3 percent) were lost
Approximate bomb tonnage in war: 955,044 tons
Averages per 24-hour period: 186.8 sorties, 4.3 aircraft lost, 460.5 tons of bombs dropped
Comment. The overall loss rate for daylight sorties - 1.2 percent - is deceptive. The majority of daylight sorties were flown in the last year of the war when the Allies held complete air supremacy by day. Losses in daylight operations in the first three and a half years of the war were much heavier than night losses.
AIRCRAFT SORTIES AND CASUALTIES
Notes
1.
Figures quoted for sorties are taken from the War Room Manual. They are slightly higher than those quoted by us in our Final Operational Statistics on. The reason for this is the different interpretations of what constituted an operational sortie. For example, the petrol-carrying flights by Halifaxes in 1944 and the Lancaster flights in Operations Manna and Exodus in 1945 were not counted as operational sorties in our figures.
2.
'Operational Crashes' are the numbers of aircraft recorded in Bomber Command documents as having crashed in the United Kingdom while outward or inward bound on operational flights. It is impossible to say how many of these aircraft became total losses. It is interesting to note the dramatic decrease in the proportion of operational crashes as the war progressed, due to better crew training, improved flying control and diversion procedures, and the introduction of more reliable aircraft. Compare, for example, the Whitley's crash rate of 1.43 percent and the Lancaster's of 0.16 percent. Overall figures for the first half of the war were 1.05 percent compared with 0.20 percent for the second half of the war.
AIRCREW CASUALTIES
Approximately 125,000 aircrew served in the squadrons and the operational training and conversion units of Bomber Command during the war. Nearly 60 percent of Bomber Command aircrew became casualties. Approximately 85 percent of these casualties were suffered on operations and 15 percent in training and other accidents. The Air Ministry was able to compile the following figures up to
