In what was an all-out assault against the Luftwaffe ahead of D-Day, Big Week was launched in February 1944 by the USAAF’s 8th Air Force with RAF Bomber Command support. James Holland explains the background and sets the scene to what was then the biggest aerial battle of the war.
RAF Leeming was a bleak place to be in the autumn of 1943. Lying on a long stretch of flat land sandwiched between the high hills of the Yorkshire Dales to the west and the Yorkshire Moors to the east, it was a place where icy northerly winds swept down and where low cloud seemed to stay rooted.
It was home to 429 Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force, part of 6 Group in RAF Bomber Command, and among two of the pilots there were identical twins, Bill and George Byers, from Vancouver. They were both laid-back and phlegmatic fellows and took the conditions in their stride – after all, they were used to snow and cold in Canada – but Leeming looked particularly spectral that morning of Wednesday 3 November. The hangars and buildings, not to mention the Halifaxes parked up around the perimeter, were little more than dark looming shapes amidst the mist and drizzle. Yet, shortly after 10am, a cipher clerk received a signal from Bombe…
