#OnThisDay 📅 On This Night — 20/21 December 1943 ✈️ Bomber Command: Frankfurt-am-Main War Diary Extract (Bomber Command): Frankfurt: 650 aircraft – 390 Lancasters, 257 Halifaxes, 3 Mosquitos. The German control rooms were able to plot the bomber force as soon as it left the English coast and were able to continue plotting it all the way to Frankfurt. There were many combats on the route to the target. The Mannheim diversion did not draw fighters away from the main attack until after the raid wa

On December 29, 1944, a catastrophic accident at RAF Waterbeach shook the foundations of Bomber Command. While being loaded with its lethal payload, Avro Lancaster PD325 exploded on the ground, killing nine ground crew members and destroying or damaging nearly a dozen aircraft. In this video, we honor the "erks"—the unsung heroes of the ground crews—who faced life-threatening conditions every day on home soil. We detail the timeline of the disaster, the massive scale of the blast, and read the n