Roddy MacKenzie – Canada’s Bomber Command in WWII. Churchhill’s Greatest Triumph

Canada played vital role in WW II Bomber Command

Joe Vanderkooi introduced guest speaker Roddy MacKenzie, a retired Vancouver lawyer, who spoke via Zoom, about his book, “Bomber Command: Churchill’s Greatest Triumph”.

Roddy’s father, Roland MacKenzie, DFC of Calgary, piloted a Lancaster as part of Bomber Command in 34 combat sorties over Nazi controlled Europe from April to August of 1944. Like so many veterans who survived the war, Roland spoke little of his exploits, but curiosity led Roddy into six years of researching, speaking and writing about Bomber Command and finally publishing his book in 2023.

One of the first things that Roddy discovered was that very little was known about Bomber Command and what it achieved. He pointed out that Winston Churchill was convinced that the key to success in the war against Germany was going to be air superiority. Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon McKenzie King was in full agreement to the extent that Canada contributed $1.6 billion toward Bomber Command with much of that money going to build runways for training pilots from the U.K., Australia and New Zealand as well as Canada. Although Commonwealth countries made up the bulk of the crews, crew members actually came from more than 60 countries.

Roddy found that some of his best information about the impact of Bomber Command came from Germany. Even Hitler was said to blame the German Airforce’s failure to control the skies for Germany’s loss of the war. Roddy’s research uncovered the tremendous cost in aircrews and aircraft. One quarter of all Canadians in uniform who died in the Second World War were killed in Bomber Command.

Roddy said that Canada played a major role in Bomber Command which included several strictly Canadian squadrons. Despite being a relatively small nation, by the end of the war, Canada boasted the fourth largest air force. Roddy said that he also learned that there were a number of false statements and reports about the efforts of Bomber Command. As an example, he said that Joseph Goebbels added a zero to the total deaths in the bombing of Dresden claiming 200,000 died instead of the actual number of about 20,000. Roddy pointed out that the development of the Lancaster bombers led to much more precise targeting on bombing runs under the direction of Sir Arthur Harris, Marshall of the Royal Air Force.

For his efforts in uncovering the story of Bomber Command, Roddy has been recognized with a number of honors. He is Honorary Ambassador of the International Bomber Command Centre in the UK, Honorary Member of the New Zealand Bomber Command Association, a Life Member of the Bomber Command Memorial and Museum of Canada and a Member of the Bomber Command Association of Australia.

Duncan McLaren thanked Roddy for his dynamic presentation and Roddy, a Probus member in Vancouver, offered to return his honorarium to the club.

To view a video of this presentation, please click here.