Lack of Moral Fibre (or Bran Flakes for your Guts)
Added 2025-10-22 13:27:06 +0000 UTCMy beautiful, hard drinking, hard swearing, hard of thinking freinds and fellow members of the Hellfire Club, I bring good news, because Lo! There is a new video just for you [until Friday]!
I began to write a section into the overall script for the Bomber War series on what the RAF called Lack of Moral Fibre, probabloy 12 months ago. As I was researching the next proper episode of the bomber war, I came across a great swathe of stats and so revisited the old script. One thing led to another and now, very much sooner than planned, you have a very different kind of video on discipline, combat stress, LMF and how the British and US authorities thought about it. I hope you enjoy what is a slight aside, but I think an important one, especially given the world we live in today.
Comments
Thank you for this video. It is interesting that you note the aspect that often seems to be forgotten: this can be a post-/cross- generational issue. My mother was severely depressed during times and didn't talk about it. Only after her death (of cancer) at 50 I realized that she had suffered from PTSD having been forced to watch the execution of schoolmates (or friends of that she knew) on the streets of Rotterdam by the Nazi's. That hurt and it kept hurting. That two of her brothers were incarcerated in Germany as forced laborers, didn't help either. And she passed it on. I can still remember her fear during the Cuba Crisis and it did affect me.
Rik Stigter
2026-01-15 08:02:15 +0000 UTCI never would. Thank you for sharing that pal.
William Carver
2025-11-09 06:59:29 +0000 UTCI despise the LMF label. We all have a measure of courage but when it's gone...... I almost - almost - broke one day in 1982 in the Falklands. My boss just tapped my hand and we looked at each other for the duration of the air attack. He just said I was fine, that he was scared too but we had our duty. I got through it and carried on. I saw more action throughout almost 40 years service but, although scared at times, I never came that close to breaking. I still have nightmares about that raid, I wake up screaming. I was 17 at the time, 61 now. I have had therapy, hasn't worked, so I suppose that I'm going to have this until I die. But don't call someone coward if they break. Next time it could be you.
Nicholas Moore
2025-11-08 23:20:19 +0000 UTCIn fairness those pictures often showed places that were not the target....I don't think that requirement was really about a willingness so much as improving skills
William Carver
2025-10-23 07:51:04 +0000 UTCAnother outstanding work. Having had the good fortune to take pleasure flights in planes built during and before WW2, the rattling, shaky, thin skinned intro hit home.
Anxious
2025-10-23 07:47:06 +0000 UTCOnly thing missing was the requirement for Bomber Command Crews to take a picture of their target to prove they'd got there..
Andrew Dederer
2025-10-23 02:33:14 +0000 UTC
