Jane Gulliford Lowes, The Invisible Campaign: Bomber Command Gardening Operations 1940 -1945 (Tempest Books, 2025)

Many will know Jane from her Never Mind the Dam Busters podcast, and in her new book, she continues with the important historical theme she and her co-host James Jefferies continually refer to; that the history of RAF Bomber Command during the war was much more than the work of one particularly famous squadron and one particular type of four engine bomber aircraft. Here, she convincingly makes the case of the strategic importance of Bomber Command’s anti-shipping minelaying role. Some of Bomber Command’s greatest successes were indeed ‘invisible’. Hundreds of enemy vessels were sunk or damaged by mines dropped by aircraft (p.264).   

A vertical aerial photograph taken during a mine-laying operation.
https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/51111

A study of the RAF’s minelaying role has long been needed, and The Invisible Campaign examines the frequently neglected topic of aerial minelaying in ports, rivers, bays and estuaries during the war in detail. Often misunderstood and written off by bomber crews and historians as a ‘milk run’, Jane explains how minelaying was a vital and effective part of the Allied war effort. Minelaying lacked the glamour of bombing because there was no visual confirmation of the effect. Mines were designed to lie dormant for weeks or months, some not detonating until they had been passed over by a predetermined number of vessels. However, more tonnage of shipping was sunk by aerial mines than by direct attack by Allied aircraft.

Using the code word ‘gardening,’ aircrew flying Bomber Command’s Hampdens, Wellingtons, Stirlings, Manchesters, Lancasters, and Halifaxes planted their ‘vegetables’ in coastal areas named after plants from Anemones to Zinnias (p.259-260). They flew at night in all weathers often while under attack from coastal batteries or night fighters. Jane shows that gardening was a dangerous occupation and the ‘chop rate’ was high. However, some crews became incredibly proficient at minelaying. For example, flying Wellingtons, the Poles of 300 Squadron became No.1 Group’s minelaying experts, laying 2,000 mines from RAF Ingham during 1943 (p.152).

A sea mine on a trolley with a Polish marked Wellington behind. Three ground crew are at work. https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/items/show/19058

Jane considers the evolution of minelaying; the aircraft, the weapons, navigational aids, and the changing tactics used on operations, but importantly, she also focuses on the experiences of the aircrew. As the last surviving veterans leave us and their endeavours pass from living memory, Jane uses her research into 10 Squadron’s operations and in particular her knowledge of the crew known as ‘Penny’s Prangers’, to tell the tale of minelaying operations from their perspective. Throughout, the book considers the historiography of Bomber Command and their minelaying role and how gardening has been remembered or neglected in popular memory. In doing so, Jane also reconsiders the legacy of Arthur Harris.

Jane’s meticulous research into this important but often overlooked aspect of the war began with her award-winning MA dissertation. Her book contains appendices, comprehensive endnotes and bibliography, colour maps on glossy pages with a ribbon for place keeping. I am sure that Jane’s book will very quickly become the go-to book for the history of aerial minelaying in the Second World War.

Jane’s new book, The Invisible Campaign on a table in the foreground. Panel from the recent ‘Writers of War’ from the ‘Women at War’ book festival at the IBCC in Lincoln. From L-R, Chair Suzanne Raine, IBCC Trustee, Sarah-Louise Miller, Jane Gulliford-Lowes, Clare Mulley, and Jeannie Benjamin.



Sebastiano Parisi, Gangsters dell’aria: Storie di piloti da caccia americani su Milano e Torino 1944-1945 [book review]

In my long experience at the IBCC Digital Archive, I have frequently observed a noticeable difference in the way users tend to approach primary sources on the bombing war in Europe.

People who relate to specific Bomber Command personnel frequently start from a name and then explore all possible leads to places that they were stationed at, aircraft flown or serviced, notable operations etc. Contrariwise, people from places that were at the receiving end of the bombing war normally begin with an event: their primary concern is to establish who was involved, who gave the order, and the military justification of an action that frequently caused the death of an innocent relation, wanton destruction, or any combination thereof.

The latter is normally frustrated. No answer is more unsatisfying than hearing that a knot of people, a car, a bus, a cart, a local train, a tramway just happened to be in sight, therefore becoming a mere target of opportunity. The revelation is normally met with disappointment and discomfort: nothing is harder than the combination of lack of clear agency (death comes from an unknown and sometimes unseen perpetrator) and lack of discernible purpose, especially when it appears to be utterly senseless, and therefore completely unthinkable.

Sebastiano Parisi sets about to redress this anomaly in his recent book Gangsters dell’aria: Storie di piloti da caccia americani su Milano e Torino 1944-1945 (Air Gangsters: Stories or American Fighter Pilots on Milan and Turin 1944-1945). Tellingly, the book is part of an aptly named series Chi mi ha bombardato? (Who bombed me?)

The foci of the research are four incidents: the Piazzale Loreto bombing in Milano, the strafing of a tram at Orbassano, the attacks on a train at Bollate and on a bus at Badile, with a cumulative death toll of more than 250 civilians. Parisi describes the context in which these events took place and brings to life the human side of the event by skilfully combing a range of primary sources from the Allied side. He provides background information not only on the units that carried out these operations but also pieces together the biographies of the pilots. This is what sets the book apart from the mainstream of military history: what emerges is a tapestry of experiences captured as formal portraits, relaxed snapshots, photos of wives and fiancées, documents about life milestones, pets, homes and suchlike. While sketching profiles of men belonging to what is informally known as ‘the greatest generation’, the author takes great care in avoiding any kind of moral judgement: supplemented with minimal interpretation, sources are allowed to speak for themselves. This choice is intensively compelling. Personnel are not brutes inhabiting a different ethical universe, but totally ordinary human beings sucked into the brutal logic of a relentless total war.

The most interesting passages in the book are those in which the author tries to address a question that survivors asked themselves many times over: did they really know they were deliberately targeting civilians? If the answer is yes, they committed a war crime and must be punished accordingly – if the answer is no, they are at least culpably of neglect of even wilful ignorance. The documents shed light to a complex universe at the intersection of disciplinary power, personal ambition, the persuasion of fighting a just war, as well as the rules governing the use of violence in an armed conflict.

The book reads well, is well-researched and it will equally appeal to the Second World War buff and the local history enthusiast. Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gangsters-dellaria-americani-1944-1945-bombardato/dp/B0DSV5732X

Alessandro Pesaro

University of Lincoln