Bomber (novel)

The novel Bomber is a roman à clef written by Len Deighton and published in the UK in 1970. It is the fictionalised account of the events of June 31 (sic), 1943 in which an RAF bombing raid on the Ruhr area of western Germany goes wrong. In each chapter, the plot is advanced by seeing the progress of the day through the eyes of protagonists. The action is fast and vivid while at the same time giving much factual information in an almost documentary fashion about the preparation and delivery of a heavy bomber raid, the defence against it and its impact on the unfortunate victims. The novel is weaker when it comes to characterisation; individuals are somewhat one-dimensional stereotypes to represent differing points of view and attitudes.

Trivia

• The novel, Bomber, is an early example of docudrama very thoroughly researched and a mine of detail even down to the 1943 price of a Lancaster bomber. Deighton himself claimed to have written more than half a million words in research notes.
• Bomber is probably one of the earliest printed works of fiction composed using a computer - an IBM 72IV with magnetic tape.
• The book's opening words: It was a bomber's sky: dry air, wind enough to clear the smoke, cloud broken enough to recognise a few stars have appeared in several quotation dictionaries.
• Kingsley Amis is said to have rated Bomber one of the 10 best books of the 20th century.
• The book was adapted into a radio drama by the BBC in 1995. The play was broadcast in several sections over the course of a single night, timed so that the events were broadcast at approximately the time they would really have occurred (though the section depicting the raid was broadcast in the late evening, rather then the early hours of the morning when it would really have happened). It was very highly praised as a superior example of its genre. Tom Baker led the cast as the narrator.