In 1939 the cost of travelling by cruise ship from Australia to England was beyond the wildest dreams of your average Australian. Overseas travel was an absolute luxury and only for the very richest people.

Most Australlian workers at this time got one week’s paid annual leave. Not much good if you wanted to spend two months sailing to England and then spend another two months sailing back.

There was some long distance air travel – in the great and luxurious flying boats of the time. They would fly over the Atlantic, and even to Australia, landing frequently on the water on their way. That was the beauty of the flying boats, airfields weren’t needed. But flying in these days, especially long distances, was extremely dangerous. Many important military leaders during World War 2 were killed in plane crashes, as was Major Glenn Miller. Churchill especially made many trips out of England during the war, nineteen in all between August 1941 and March 1945, and none of them were free of the risk of death.

And once again, just like travelling on a cruise ship, passenger flights were unbelievably expensive, considerably more than travelling on a cruise ship, and it required more courage than paying to fly into space for a few minutes on Elon Musk’s Project X space ships – which are infinitely safer.

So international travel for the overwhelming majority of Australians wasn’t even a dream.

The Great Depression in Australia was almost as bad as it was in Germany. It’s effects were still being felt when World War 2 started.

So what I’ve been saying in my long winded way, is that although heading off to war in England may not quite be your idea of a dream come true, it must have been a pretty exhilarating prospect for the young Australians who signed up to be trained as aircrews serving in Bomber Command, flying bombing missions over occupied Europe from air bases in England.

This type of war, a campaign waged entirely in the air, had never happened before so no one knew what to expect. It turned out to be something far worse than anyone had counted on – far worse for the crews flying those planes, and far worse for the people on the ground where the bombs were dropped.

But I’m sure the feelings of the loved ones back home, apart from never ceasing to worry about their loved ones serving with Bomber Command, had another dimenstion too which were probably reflected in the 1923 Eddie Cantor song , about the soldiers who had gone off to fight the Great War, “How Ya Gonna Keep Them Down on the Farm”.

In this series of programmes I’m going to be looking at this air war through the eyes of a young man from Mareeba, Vic Trimble. His story, and the story of the crew of the Lancaster bomber that he skippered, is told in their biography written by Don McNaughton, the son of Roy McNaughton, who had just turned 19 when he joined Vic Trimble’s crew as a mid-upper air-gunner.

Vic and his crew were seven (that was how many men made up the crew of a Lancaster bomber) of about 10,000 Australians who volunteered for, and served with Bomber Command in the war against Nazi Germany in Europe. In all 125,000 personnel flew bombers against Germany and Italy during World War II. A staggering 55,573 of them gave their lives – but not in vain.

Jesus said in John 15:13: “For the greatest love of all is a love that sacrifices all. And this great love is demonstrated when a person sacrifices his life for his friends.”

Hitler and the Nazis were one of the greatest horrors that the world has ever seen and it was vital that his regime was brought down.

Tag words: Major Glenn Miller; Winston Churchill; Elon Musk; Project X; Great Depression; World War 2; Bomber Command; Eddie Cantor; How Ya Gonna Keep Them Down on the Farm; Mareeba; Vic Trimble; Roy McNaughton; Nazi Germany; John 15:13; United States Army Air Force; President Roosevelt; Casablanca; French North Africa; El Alamein; Gone with the Wind; Scarlett O’Hara; Ashley Wilkes; 207 Squadron RAF; 51st Militia Battalion;