Bad Night Over Lille

GUEST SPEAKER: COLONEL STEVE LARKINS OAM

This is a story that began with a chance meeting with a Belgian detective at the Menin Gate in 1998, and was spurred in 2001 by a leather flying helmet and pictures of a crashed ‘Australian’ Lancaster and its crew. I learned recently that Conrad had identified the crew which included two South Australians, and he recently published an article on the aircraft in the AWM’s ‘Wartime’ magazine.

I was interested in the ‘bigger picture’ and discovered that for two Australian Lancaster squadrons, this had been their worst night of the war. They weren’t flying deep into Germany, just a short hop across the Channel to the city of Lille, in the heart of the WW1 battlefields their fathers had fought over a scant 26 years earlier. What had happened that such a toll of aircraft and men had been taken? This story is a vignette of RAF Bomber Command’s war, and the impact it had on the other side of the globe.

Time: 1830 lecture begins; 1930 dinner

Members Price: $65.00; $15.00 lecture only

Non-Members: $75.00; $15.00 lecture only

Dress: Jacket and Tie

RSVP: By Monday 7 June