This was very interesting.

I have a personal connection here. 

One of my father's cousins - just barely old enough to enlist, btw - joined the RAF when World War II broke out, and found his way to the job of a flight lieutenant in Bomber Command.  His father (born in Scotland, migrating to Australia with his parents and siblings a few years before WWI broke out) had fought in World War I, as a wireless officer aboard the troopships, and then re-enlisted alongside his  first-born son when World War II broke out.  Thus, while the young son - barely in his twenties - was flying missions into Germany, the middle-aged father was also serving: as an intelligence and operations officer with the RAAF and then with the RAF.  They were among the lucky ones: they both returned to Australia safe and sound.

And one of my mother's relations (a first cousin once-removed) - a man whose father had seen service at Gallipoli in WWI, and survived it - also served in Bomber Command, as a wireless operator air gunner; and survived. (In civilian life after the war he discovered a vocation to holy orders, and spent a long career as a Reverend in the Methodist and then in the Uniting Church).

I am told that it was the single most deadly theatre of war for Australia: of 10, 000 Australians who served in Bomber Command, 3,486 were killed in action and 650 died in training accidents.  That loss, in that one field of battle, accounted for 1 in 5 of all Australian personnel killed in action in World War II.

I understand that there were no less than 100 Australian veterans, survivors of Bomber Command, at the opening of the memorial; transported to London specially for the occasion.  30 in the official party and an additional 70 assisted in their travel by the Veterans' Affairs department.

See here:

www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-19/the-men-of-bomber-command-take-to-the-skies-again/4080022

here

www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-12/more-aussie-veterans-to-visit-london-memorial/4007378

and here

www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-24/bomber-command-veterans-head-to-london-for-70th-anniversary/4089162

They took offered their lives to save civilization when it mattered.

Thank you for writng this tribute.