Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) recognises the courage and sacrifice of the young Australian men who actively served in Bomber Command in World War II;

(2) requests the creation of a medal for Royal Australian Air Force men who served in action in Australian and British squadrons in Bomber Command in World War II;

(3) notes that:

(a) over 10,000 Australians served in Bomber Command, in which over 4,000 of these airmen lost their lives;

(b) Bomber Command had the highest casualty rate in Australia's military history;

(c) a Bomber Command crew member had a worse chance of survival than an infantry officer in World War I; and

(d) there are fewer than 100 Australians remaining who flew in Bomber Command; and

(4) calls on the Government to, as a matter of urgency, create a medal to recognise and honour Australian airmen who served in Bomber Command in World War II.

I think people here will be amazed to hear that it was as late as Thursday, 28 June 2012 when Her Majesty the Queen attended the dedication of the Bomber Command Memorial and unveiled a sculpture of a bomber aircrew in London. This is extraordinary this long after the loss of so many lives at the highest rates of loss of any group in military history. Several years ago, Australians in Bomber Command received a small clasp in some recognition of their service—a totally inadequate recognition. This motion calls on the Australia government to recognise the incredible sacrifice of those young men who were willing to go to the United Kingdom. So many of them lost their lives.

In 1940, with France defeated and the disaster of the British Army at Dunkirk, Winston Churchill could see no other road to victory than a sustained bombing campaign against the industrial might and technical advances of Germany. But the UK would need massive numbers of fighter and bomber aircraft. They also needed crew. They had neither at the time; hence, the Empire Air Training Scheme, or EATS, was born. Training of the best educated and physically and mentally fittest young men was conducted in Canada, Australia, South Africa and Rhodesia—now Zimbabwe. All these men were volunteers. After 18 months of intensive training, these teachers, farmers and teenagers not long out of school were ready to crew up to be sent across to the United Kingdom to join other crews or to become all-Australian crews with a British engineer.

As Bomber Command crews attacked over Europe night after night in the theatre of war, they were engaged in running battles with the Luftwaffe night-fighters and anti-aircraft flak. This was shot up from batteries on the ground. The losses were huge, with more than 55,573 casualties, or an attrition rate of crews of 51 per cent—the highest rate of casualties of any fighting unit in the war. An Australian crew had a one-in-six chance of completing a tour of 30 missions or a one-in-40 chance of completing a second. These casualty rates did not include those who were killed on landing back in Britain after a mission. Their Lancasters were often crippled by enemy fire. I just want to read a quick quote from a pilot landing in Britain after a Nuremberg operation. Phil Morris says: 'Flight officer Russell had a collision near Scampton in low cloud as we came into home base. It always seems to cloud up in the last five minutes of a flight at this joint. He went up in flames, as usual'—an extraordinary observation of a man he knew, a fellow Australian. There were of course also lots of accidents in training. It is tragic to think of the numbers who died in Canada in training without their loved ones there to observe their funerals.

In conclusion, I call on the medal to be most urgently created for the last remaining 100 men of Bomber Command. These men, now in their 90s, were some of our most heroic and amazing survivors of that terrible series of campaigns. Amongst those survivors is my father, Harvey Bawden—now the only survivor of his crew. Of the seven of his crew, five unfortunately were killed at the time of their 29th mission, with their bombing raid ending in disaster for their Lancaster plane. The rear-gunner, Jim Griffin, was killed in the plane coming down, and four of them were killed by a mob in a brutal murder which was later prosecuted in war actions.

I commend this motion to the House and I say that it is time that Australia stood up and acknowledged the extraordinary contribution of our great Bomber Command crews. (Time expired)

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