FROM BUNKERS deep under the hills of the Chilterns hundreds of thousands of young men were sent out on bomber missions.

More than 58,000 men would not return, shot down over Germany and occupied Europe.

John Sweetman's book, Bomber Crew, attempts to make sense of the slaughter and also to put the sacrifice of these men in its proper perspective.

Just who were these men and what made them knit together to form the sometimes seven-man crew of RAF Bomber Command's heavy bombers?

For a start they represented almost every conceivable nationality.

The somewhat stereotypical view of RAF crew as British, if not English, mostly officers, from middle or upper class backgrounds does not survive contact with this book.

For a start the recruits of RAF Bomber Command were not English, or even British.

Almost every nation that had fallen under Nazi influence in Europe was represented such as Poland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark had nationals serving in the Royal Air Force.

Then there were the Commonwealth countries and even men from the USA, not even at war in 1939 and 1940, made their way across the pond to join.

So the multi-national crew of, say, a Halifax, Stirling or Lancaster bomber, would fly.

They almost blended completely with their machine until there was no difference, only detaching themselves from the mechanics of their plane and their mission when they finally stepped out on to the airfield at the end of their sortie.

Apart from the professionalism, there are the human stories that John Sweetman sprinkles through out the book.

Sergeant "Taffy" Phillips, who twice saved the crew of a Lancaster badly shot-up over Norway.

Then there is the story of Flight Sergeant James Watts who was killed on an operation eight days before his wedding.

Sixty years later the people of Anzegem in Belgium dedicated a memorial to F/Sgt Watt's crew. John Hannah was 18 and already a sergeant in Bomber Command when he was awarded the Victoria Cross for saving a burning Hampden bomber.

He himself was injured in the incident.

Despite the destruction wrought on German cities there are indications in the book that not all of Bomber Command crews were pleased with their task.

One senior officer told crews about to destroy Duisberg "go for the centre of the town boys. Plenty of dry old timber there, it will burn well... after all they do it to our towns so we do it to theirs."

"The old platitudes," Donald Bruce reflected, "but how else can we argue?"

The book is full of the reminiscences and excerpts from diaries and letters.

What this brings to the book is the human element that balances out the politicking and the planning that is also covered.

The men of Bomber Command started the war as ordinary, in some ways unremarkable men, but they achieved what had hitherto been thought of as the unachievable, and, in doing so, changed the course of warfare, as well as the war.

Bomber Crew Taking on the Reich by John Sweetman published by Little, Brown, £17.99