The Despair Of Progress

The air has of late been full of the last world war - full of broadcasts about the Dambusters, whose raid on the dams of Germany happened seventy years ago this week. And around here, full of the aeroplane that was used - the sole flying Lancaster bomber has been doing duty on several displays, its large black cross appearing in the sky a few hundred feet above Woodhall and Coningsby.

It's the sound that strikes me more than the sight. The four V-12 petrol engines drumming across the farmlands, together making a noise quite unlike anything else I've ever heard. At once resolute and threatening, it marks a time in history when things were madder than they are now.

Now, I've been round the inside of a Lancaster. I know a bit about the operation of a bombing war. But I would never pretend I know the first thing about what it was like to fly one in earnest, setting out for long flights to do with death and destruction.

The men who flew them were incredibly brave. The things they did were horrendous. Did they have to be done? - probably. When you get to that point, all the moral measurements that I'm familiar with cease to have any bearing on what's right and what's wrong.

So I neither condemn nor celebrate what they did. I'm just amazed that they managed to do it, taking the technology of the time way beyond its limits. They did what they were asked to do, that's all. The people to blame were either sitting in offices a long way away, or were lying in cemeteries scattered across Europe. Too late for all that.

But the thing that really depressed me was a flypast today in Woodhall Spa. I'd just cycled over for a swim, of all things, and didn't know the new memorial to the Dambuster squadron was being dedicated today. The Lancaster duly flew over, just as I was weaving through parked cars on the way to Jubilee Park, so I stopped to watch it.

I waited in case it came back, but instead a pair of Tornado jets flew over, too. I suppose the RAF wanted to mark its current firepower, as well as commemorate deeds gone by.

But all it made me think was how we haven't progressed at all - at least, not in the right way. If the bravery of the men in bombers had any meaning at all, it would have been to prevent warfare of that kind ever happening again. Maybe the deterrent argument works (although the jets from Coningsby seem to be quite busy enough on active service to me), and we do have to keep making our weapons as good as everyone else's if we're to protect ourselves. Maybe those supersonic spears are just what's needed.

But wouldn't it have been better if we hadn't had to dedicate all that money, brawn and brain to developing ever more destructive ways of killing each other? Of course it would. Of course it would. And that's why I felt sad, even though I enjoyed my swim.

It's been a long winter.