Bomber

by Len Deighton

First published 1970

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4.3(5,075)

On a summer night in 1943, an RAF bomber force sets out to attack Germany. One aircraft and its crew become part of a much larger system involving planners, ground staff, fighter controllers, German aircrew and civilians living beneath the approaching raid. Small technical failures and ordinary decisions accumulate as the operation moves toward a town that was never meant to become its centre.

Deighton follows both sides of the air war without reducing the raid to a contest between heroes and villains. The machinery of strategic bombing is shown through individual lives, making the novel as much about organisation, chance and civilian vulnerability as about aircraft in combat.