This might be a dumb colonial question…

Are there no more Battle of Britain parades?

Tonight I sit here writing the final parade schedule, parade order and annouced guest list for our Battle of Britain Parade tommorow (Sunday September 16th) and I guess this is a piece of history we are forgetting about as we chase the technology of the day.

The Battle of Britain involved pilots from every allied nation including the USA, who had not officially become involved yet.

Possibly the greatest air battle the world will ever see and a most decisive one as if the Luftwaffe had succeeded Britain would have surely fallen.

The notes read like a movie script….700 young pilots standing against an invincilbe force and holding back an army of 250,000.

Reads like the next Star Wars episode…but has fallen from the free worlds mind…kind of sad.

But I will be on parade tommorow, along with several hundred others here in Edmonton.

Tom H

Tom H

This is the letter sent by our Museum President to the Editor of the newspaper involved. It was published in the newspaper today Sept/4/2007

As someone who has spent his entire adult life writing and teaching history, including courses on Canadian Military History, Twentieth Century Warfare and the History of the Second World War, I consider myself a fully paid up member of the professional historians’ union. I have also been for some years President of the Alberta Aviation Museum and I understand and sympathize with the problems museums have in attempting to present an accurate idea of the past in the face of all kinds of competing pressures. Why is it then that I find myself more in sympathy with those who pushed for changes to the War Museum’s strategic bombing exhibit than with the professional historians who wrote and are now defending every word of the display?

One of the things that bothers me is that the media has almost unanimously portrayed this episode as one in which a beleaguered band of dispassionate scholars tries to uphold the truth against a powerful veterans’ lobby. The controversy, in fact, originated at the end of the Second World War with a project called the United States Strategic Bombing Survey which was more about American inter-service rivalries in the post-war era than about the war itself. Since then it has been mostly between different groups of historians who disagree about the morality and effectiveness of the bombing; two things that are inextricably linked. The veterans, who understandably prefer the version of the history of strategic bombing that sees it as an essential contribution to the winning of the war have some political clout but they are also are very much the underdogs in the war of words because they lack the analytical training and rhetorical skills of the historians.

Those veterans and non-veterans who object to the War Museum exhibit are not asking for a wholesale revision. Most of the controversy centres around a single paragraph:
“The value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested. Bomber Command’s aim was to crush civilian morale and force Germany to surrender by destroying its cities and industrial installations. Although Bomber Command and American attacks left 600,000 Germans dead and more than five million homeless, the raids resulted in only small reductions of German war production until late in the war.” As the supporters of the exhibit have pointed out at length, each of the three sentences in the paragraph is, by itself, undeniably true. Together, in my estimation, they are completely one-sided. The first sentence suggests that the rest of the paragraph is going to present both sides, or perhaps some middle position in the debate. It does neither. The other two sentences, taken together, are a highly compressed summary of what the critics of the strategic bombing campaign have said over the years. It didn’t work and it killed many thousands, by implication, for no legitimate purpose. The other side of the argument gets not a word.

The statement that the bombing campaign resulted in only small reductions in German war production comes from the USSBS and has been a favorite point over the years of those who deplore the bombing campaign on moral grounds. Randall Hansen, in the article in Friday’s Journal, tries to defend against the most obvious weakness of the argument by asserting that any claims that production would have been higher without the bombing are, ‘One-sided counter-factual speculation.’ There is really no need to speculate, however, because there are facts in abundance to support the common sense idea that thousands of tons of bombs had to have a significant effect. German military production fell in spite of the fact that Hitler took over the industries and resources of France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, Poland and acquired the services of millions of slave laborers. While German production was falling, that of the Allies (not subject to bombing) was doubling or tripling annually. Historians like Richard Overy have also pointed out that the effort to defend against the bombers absorbed the efforts of about 2 million Germans and, at the time of the critical Eastern Front battles of Kursk and Stalingrad, 70% of all German fighter aircraft.
The question that the controversy raises for the War Museum and those who finance it (we Canadian taxpayers) is, Whose history is it anyway? Does it belong only to the professional historians, or do those who participated have a say? I find Randall Hansen’s assertion that the veterans are too ignorant and self-interested to be allowed a voice and should therefore just butt out, incredibly arrogant and condescending.

Rod Macleod
Professor Emeritus of History and Classics, University of Alberta
President, Alberta Aviation Museum

Posted with permisson of our President

Tom H

Presentations of history do need to be corrected from time to time as new information or discoveries come availabile…any Museum trying to be good will do their best to stay aware of new information and do their best to include it.

What I hate are those that try to alter history in spite of the facts.

Tom H

Thanks for the kind words Albert!

We now have a total of 38 aircraft on display or in restoration making us one of the larger Canadian Collection. The biggest artifact is of course our building, originally #2 Air Observers School she looks to be the last double wide double long BCATP hangar.

The credit to our growth goes to a great volunteer base and the suport of the many organizations that work in the facility with us.

Carpetbagger

Nice to hear you remember 418 Squadron…we are currently pushing a letter campaign to get 418 reactivated as a helicopter squadron here in Edmonton!

The Boston of coursre is on our acquisitionlist and we follow every lead to the bitter end. To this point we have located 2 but they are far beyond our means as a 7 figure price tag is alot for a not for profit musesum. But so far 418 has a number of it’s types represented in the Musseum
– Mosquito
– B-25
– T-33
– Expediter
and we work toward the rest

Thanks again gents

Tom H