[1] The memorial, on the south side of Piccadilly, facing Hyde Park Corner, was built to mark the sacrifice of 55,573 aircrew from Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Poland, Czechoslovakia and other allied countries,[2] as well as civilians of all nations killed during raids.

The multi-year onslaught hastened the end of the war and thus genocide such as in Nazi extermination camps, but civilian casualties made the issue controversial.

[a] While many ignored the 43,000 civilians killed by Nazi bombing of England during the nine months of The Blitz, they gave damning attention to the 353,000 civilians killed in Germany during six years of bombing (artificially inflated, by propaganda in Nazi Germany, to closer to 1 million – a figure accepted and repeated for decades afterwards by critics and Holocaust deniers as a moral cause célèbre of the war),[5][6] but not as a direct aim of the offensives.

[9][10] Furthermore, some of this aluminium was supplied to the International Bomber Command Centre, which opened in Lincoln, England in 2018, and forms the rear plate of its "Additions Panel".

The ceremony was attended by 6,000 veterans and family members of those killed,[4] and the Avro Lancaster of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight dropped red poppy petals over Green Park.

[15] In March 2015, Les Munro, Royal New Zealand Air Force squadron leader and one of the last surviving members of the Dambusters Raid, intended to sell his war medals and flight logbook at auction to raise funds for the upkeep of the memorial.