The causes behind catastrophic accidents and training crash incidents during the Second World War

From 1939 to 1945 thousands of young airmen met terrible ends not at the hands the enemy's machine guns or because of the murderous flak of anti-aircraft fire, but in catastrophic accidents and training crashes. Incredibly, these incidents accounted for the lives of over 8000 men, or almost 15% of all RAF Bomber Commands fatalities during the War. The staggering losses were not just limited to Britain; all over the world training flights, routine sorties and cargo transport journeys all sometimes ended in disaster. Perhaps its not so surprising that, amid the weight of the human costs of the air war against Germany, these hidden losses have been forgotten; but all the men in the aircraft that never returned signed up for the same war and they were all someones father, brother or son. The same letters went home to every family. Luckily, there are those who are determined that those brave men should not be a footnote in military history. They've spent years investigating, uncovering, searching, probing and digging the crash sites and there are hundreds of them. They are the World war two Air Crash Investigators and now, for the first time, they have agreed to let us join them.