Following the diligent work of volunteers at the International Bomber Command Centre (IBCC), 6,200 airmen lost in the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and North African theatre of operations in World War II will now be recognised on one of the world’s largest archival databases.
The IBCC Losses Database has so far taken a team of volunteers more than 12 years to build and provides the world’s largest free-to-access digital archive of the airmen and women lost in the service of Bomber Command throughout its existence.
It includes the lives and deaths of more than 58,000 Bomber Command and 2,400 Second Tactical Air Force (2TAF) members supported by an ever-increasing amount of biographical information, photographs, references to other memorials, and other resources.
A cornerstone of the IBCC in Lincoln, the Losses Database is overseen by volunteer and losses archivist Dave Gilbert, who has spent 13,000 voluntary hours on the database so far.
Dave said: “Although the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and North African losses were not under the control of Bomber Command, many of its squadrons spent time in that theatre and we receive enquiries from family members on almost a daily basis asking whether they can be included, so it makes complete sense to do so.
“For those in these additional theatres, it was a very different conflict to what Bomber Command personnel experienced. There were the added perils of diseases such as malaria and dysentery and the North African theatre was particularly hostile, with some airmen having survived a crash in the desert, then perished due to dehydration.”
The latest additions to the database, researched by the volunteers, will take the total losses documented to 67,300.
“Together we’ve built an archive that includes almost seven million individual pieces of data and growing,” said Dave. “It’s an amazing achievement of collaboration and a collective passion project for us all.
“Expanding the archive to include the additional names was a natural progression. The work is never complete as there’s always something more you can write about every one of them, so I’m quite sure I’ll be doing this for the rest of my life. It’s vitally important that we continue this work.”
Nicky van der Drift, chief executive of the IBCC, said: “No one is getting paid or being made to do this, all the volunteers are supporting this work because they think it’s important that these lives and losses are remembered and reconciled.
“It’s our mission to honour those associated with Bomber Command at the IBCC and the incredible sacrifices they made, and the Losses Database is a huge part of that.”
Once added to the database, the aim is to place the additional names around the IBCC’s Memorial Spire on new ‘walls of names’, once the funds have been raised to do so.
