ANSWER: “By the summer of 1943, Bomber Command had matured into a technologically and tactically sophisticated weapon, engaged in an all-out relentless campaign, night after night, against the European Axis countries. The mighty, cooperative effort known as the Combined Bomber Offensive would become one of the most focused and demanding prolonged campaigns in modern military history. As punishing as this massive air offensive was to the Germans and, to a lesser extent, the Italians, its cost for the Allies was great. Throughout the entire European air war, more than 18,000 Allied bomber aircraft were lost and 81,000 British, Commonwealth, American and Allied airmen forfeited their lives, including a significant number of aircrew, particularly those from Britain and the Dominions, who perished on operations prior to the commencement of the Combined Bomber Offensive. Bomber Command’s fatalities constituted the largest portion, with 56,000 of it aircrew making the supreme sacrifice. Between 1942 and 1945, the Command flew more than 300,000 operational sorties. At peak periods of the bomber offensive, such as the Second Battle of the Ruhr and the Berlin raids of 1943/1944, for every 100 airmen who joined an operational training unit, fifty- one were killed on combat operations, nine more were killed in non-operational accidents and twelve became prisoners of war. Three were wounded or injured badly enough to be removed from operations, and one successfully evaded capture in enemy territory. Only twenty-four of the original 100 emerged unscathed from these arduous periods of combat.”

From  No Prouder Place – Pages 179-180