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AOC – Air Officer Commanding

ATS – Auxiliary Territorial Service; women’s branch of the army

CAS – Chief of the Air Staff; head of the RAF

C-in-C – Commander-in-Chief

CO – Squadron commanding officer

Gee – Electronic navigation aid, detecting a grid of radio signals transmitted from the UK, fitted to all Bomber Command aircraft but jammed by the Germans over continental Europe

HCU – Heavy Conversion Unit

IFF – Identification Friend or Foe: electronic radar-pulse identification device fitted to all British aircraft

MAP – Ministry of Aircraft Production

MEW – Ministry of Economic Warfare

OTU – Operational Training Unit

RAAF – Royal Australian Air Force

RAFVR – Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve

RCAF – Royal Canadian Air Force

RNZAF – Royal New Zealand Air Force

SASO – Senior Air Staff Officer; comparable to an army or divisional commander’s chief of staff

USAAF – United States Army Air Force

WAAF – Women’s Auxiliary Air Force; thus a woman serving at an RAF station would be described as a ‘Waaf’

w/op – Wireless-operator

Narrative of operations uses a twenty-four-hour clock, while the twelve-hour civilian clock is used for other timings.

Bomber Command in February 1943 comprised around two thousand aircraft including trainers – the number varied daily, and significantly fewer were immediately serviceable – of which six hundred were ‘heavies’. Each of seven operational Groups was commanded by an air vice-marshal, and contained variously five to ten squadrons. A squadron was composed of eighteen to twenty-four aircraft, confusingly led by a wing-commander, and subdivided into two or three flights, each commanded by a squadron-leader.