All that is missing from this heavyweight account of a Lancaster bomber's part in a 1943 RAF raid which hit the wrong target with ten million pounds of bombs is Dean Jagger, as the former wing adjutant, riding his bicycle up to the perimeter fence and climbing through to pace along the overgrown runway. For, essentially, [Bomber] is an RAF Twelve O'Clock High intended to be complete in every particular; it's almost as if it had been computed rather than written, and certainly it reads throughout as the product of a completely supplemented mind. (p. 4)

[He] keeps loading his book with data, not to create plausibility, but because he seems to like data for data's sake. For instance, at one point we're told:

In cash, at 1943 prices with profits pared to a minimum, each Lancaster cost £42,000. Crew-training averaged out at £10,000 each, at that time more than enough to send...