WW2 RAAF Bomber Command Named 166 Squadron Air Gunners Tunic

A lovely well preserved example named and with significant service history to Bomber Command and its deadliest night during the raids on Nuremberg in March 1944.

Tailored four pocket service dress tunic in dark blue wool serge. Black Bakelite buttons, cloth Air Gunners half wing brevet, combined shoulder eagles and nationality titles. Three place ribbon bar for operations Air Crew Europe. Matching rank for Flight Sergeant , interestingly the crown
S above the rank cheverons are in Bakelite and probably UK made. Comes with matching service dress belt. The tuinc is also possibly UK made but no tailors labels.
Named on the inside lining and on the inside sleeve shoulder.

Conformed as 166 Squadron As a Mid upset Gunner on a Lancaster Mk III. Repeated Bombing tasks to Berlin , Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Nuremberg.

Also conformed service with information and a photograph on the 166 Squadron website.


For many years after the Second World War, when the moon was in its waxing crescent phase, Bomber Command veterans might for a moment be taken back to a single disastrous night in March 1944. Some thirty years after the event, Kevin Bush, a member of the Royal Australian Air Force who served in No. 640 Squadron Royal Air Force, wrote, “Even now, when I see a bright moon, I think of it as a Nuremberg moon.” Bush was one of only three survivors from a crew of seven who escaped their Halifax bomber, shot down that fateful night.

On the night of Thursday 30 March 1944, during a raid on the Bavarian city of Nuremberg, Bomber Command suffered its highest casualties for the entire war. Within just a few hours, Bomber Command lost 96 heavy bombers from a force of 795 dispatched, amounting to 723 casualties, with 545 dead. A total of 48 Australians serving in Bomber Command were killed in the Nuremberg raid. They were part of crews in 5 Halifaxes and 20 Lancasters that were among the 96 bombers that were lost; the men were serving in seventeen different squadrons of the Royal Air Force, Royal Australian Air Force, and Royal Canadian Air Force.

This is the eightieth year since the Nuremberg raid, yet despite the horrendous losses to British and Commonwealth aircrews, the event remains little known outside veteran circles. For veterans themselves, Nuremberg was one of the key events of Bomber Command’s war – their war – alongside moments such as the Dambusters, Peenemünde, Hamburg, D-Day, raids on Berlin, and the 1943 battle of the Ruhr. For the wider public, memories of Bomber Command tend to focus on the firestorms of Hamburg (July–August 1943) and Dresden (February 1945) which resulted in mass casualties on the ground. Yet in just a short period of time – in little more than 100 minutes – en route to Nuremberg, Bomber Command lost as many aircrew killed as Fighter Command had lost during more than 100 days in the Battle of Britain in 1940.

Code: 1763