The Beach Boys: The Men Who Flew With 514 Squadron RAF

514 Squadron served in the RAF’s No. 3 Group, Bomber Command, between September 1943 and August 1945. After a short period of operations from RAF Foulsham, the squadron transferred to its permanent home at RAF Waterbeach, Cambridgeshire, in December 1943, some aircraft travelling from the old base to the new via a raid on Berlin.It was, of course, the people of the squadron who were its heart and soul. Supported by hard-working ground crew, the focus inevitably was on the airmen who climbed into their Lancaster bombers, risking and often losing their lives in the ceaseless battle to beat the most evil regime Western Europe has ever known.224 separate crews have been identified from the squadron’s Operational Record Book. This long-awaited book lists each crew, in the name of its pilot, with every available photograph of its members. These have painstakingly been collected, collated and researched by Roger Guernon whose work in maintaining the historical archive of the unit has been invaluable.For each crew, every known operational sortie has been listed, based on the summary of each ‘op’, provided when the returning crew was debriefed. All too often, however, the final record was simply ‘Aircraft Missing’.The records have been collated by Simon Hepworth and Andrew Porrelli, the information forming the basis for the two companion volumes in the 514 Squadron trilogy, ‘Striking Through Clouds’ and ‘Nothing Can Stop Us’. This massive piece of work was painstakingly edited by Stephen Kingham. The end result is the operational record of every crew, telling in official terms the account of every aircrew member’s war.The war cost 514 Squadron 88 Lancasters shot down, crashing or damaged beyond repair on operations and a further three on training flights. The real cost, though, was its people, 437 of whom gave their lives serving with 514 Squadron. The boys from the ‘Beach, as the airfield has always been known, will never be forgotten.