THEY were so young. A famous painting depicts the teenage and 20-something Australians of Bomber Command before they set off on their ill-fated mission.
The picture by Stella Bowen, in the Australian War Memorial, shows the six Australians and one British crewmen of the 460 Squadron Lancaster ahead of a raid on the German city of Friedrichshafen in April 1944, during World War Two.
Well before the painting was completed - in fact, the day after Bowen sketched and photographed the RAAF crew at the Australian base at Binbrook, Lincolnshire - they were shot down.
There was one survivor.
Bowen later said that finishing the heart-wrenching image was "like painting ghosts".
Launching a new book on Australia's role in the WWII bomber offensive - entitled Lancaster Men by Canberra author Peter Rees - former defence chief Angus Houston said casualty rates meant each bomber crew flew an average of just 16 missions.
"While fewer than two per cent of all Australians who enlisted in the Second World War fought in Bomber Command, they accounted for almost 20 per cent of all deaths in combat," he said.
"That was the highest casualty rate anywhere in our forces that fought in World War II."
To put it in perspective, a total of 507 allied aircrew died in the four months of the Battle of Britain in 1940.
In the March 1944 raid on the German city of Nuremberg, Bomber Command lost 545 people, with a total death toll of 55,573 for the war.
Of the 10,000 Australians who served with Bomber Command, 3486 were killed.
Almost seven decades after the end of the war, there are perhaps 400 Bomber Command veterans still alive, and a few were at the Australian Defence Force Academy for the launch of the Rees book.
"Most of us were young," recalled Geoff Michael, 89, who flew 32 missions as a pilot with RAF 149 Squadron.
"I was 20. In fact, I went to the squadron when I was just 19. It was never going to happen to you, whatever it was. You were fireproof and that was the way you looked at it."
For much of the war, the bomber offensive was the best means of striking Germany.
Australians flocked to Bomber Command, serving in eight RAAF squadrons and alongside airmen of other nations in every other Bomber Command squadron, including the elite pathfinders and the famous dambusters 617 Squadron.
"There's no doubt that the men of the RAAF and the allied air forces in Bomber Command had a profound effect on the war in Europe," Mr Houston said at the book launch in March in Canberra.
"The impact of their sustained campaign made a significant contribution to the defeat of Germany and the allies' ultimate victory.
"But it also came at an incredible cost - so many young lives were lost."
Rees believes history has dealt Bomber Command a poor hand. Its contribution has been questioned in the post-war examination of the bombing of cities such as Dresden.
The Dresden raid, on February 13, 1945, created a firestorm that engulfed much of the ancient city.
Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels claimed a death toll of 200,000 - and that figure has been repeated by Nazi apologists and the post-war East German communist regime.
The toll is now estimated as not more than 25,000 - which is appalling enough.
But it was a quarter of the number who died a month later in the lesser-known firebombing of Tokyo - an event regarded as the single most destructive air raid in human history.
The historical neglect was partly redressed last year with the dedication of the national Bomber Command memorial in London, an event attended by veterans from around the world.
Australians who took part in the Dresden raid, including Michael, have few misgivings.
"People forget, and I understand why they want to forget, but we were at war. It's as simple as that," he said.
"We were given a target and told to bomb the middle of the area. It's no good saying we wish we hadn't been there. I am sure I am speaking for most people.
Allan Stutter, 89, a Lancaster pilot with the RAAF 463 Squadron and veteran of 36 missions, recalled an operation not long after D-Day.
"It was pelting down rain in sheets and the cloud looked like it was touching the top of the hangars," he said.
Like everyone else on the Waddington base that day, he was astonished to find a raid on German defensive positions at Calais harbour was scheduled.
Takeoff was postponed until the next day when the weather was unchanged. Finally, they departed at 2pm in a howling gale. With full fuel and bomb load, the aircraft staggered into the sky.
"I only just cleared the fence and I was lucky there were no trees for the next five miles or so," he said.
There was no radio broadcast from the pathfinders - the bombers which travelled ahead of the main force to mark the target. Instead, the crew heard only the dulcet tones of a BBC radio announcer closing down the station service.
"Next thing he turned on God Save the King," Stutter said.
"The mid-upper gunner came on and said 'God Save the bloody King - bugger the king, what about us'."
High above the target, he was surprised to find they were on their own and wondered if the mission had been called off and they hadn't been told.
"So I thought, well bugger it. I told the flight engineer I want full takeoff power now and bomb doors open. We were flat strap," Stutter said.
"I felt the bombs go choonk, choonk, choonk, choonk, choonk and the bomber aimer says 'bombs gone', I had the doors shut, stick back and we were back in the cloud."
The next problem was finding somewhere to safely land in cloud-covered England.
As it turned out, they were diverted to an airfield on England's west coast. But the Lancaster, tonnes lighter without its bomb load, wasn't about to stop on the drenched runway.
"Finally they (the brakes) started to work and I stopped it right on the edge of the tar just before it went into the mud," Stutter said.
"When I thought about it afterwards, it was fairly obvious. I had bombed. The rest of the group hadn't."
(*Lancaster Men by Peter Rees, Allen and Unwin, 426pp, RRP $32.99)
