Bomber Command centre 'needs millions' for completion

The design is based on the layout of a Lancaster bomber, "echoing the crouching beauty of its form"

A centre to commemorate World War Two aircrews still needs millions of pounds to be completed, organisers have said.

The International Bomber Command Centre, on the outskirts of Lincoln, will tell the story of more than 55,000 personnel killed in the conflict.

But one of the people behind the £8m project, Lincolnshire's Lord Lieutenant Tony Worth, said funding still had to be raised for construction.

A 31m (102ft) spire is due to be erected by the end of May.

Lincolnshire earned the title Bomber County because a third of all the UK's stations were based in the county.

Many of the most well-known operations flew from one of these 27 bases, including the Dambusters.

During WW2, more than 125,000 men served as aircrew in Bomber Command

The project includes the memorial spire, a peace garden and a main visitor building designed to "echo the crouching shape" of a Lancaster bomber.

While the scheme was awarded £3.1m in lottery funding in October, Mr Worth explained this could only be used when other money had been secured.

"We have to build the centre first because the Heritage Lottery funding is to fill it with all the things we will use to tell everybody what happened during the war.

"So we still have plenty to do. If we had the money now, we could do it by the end of the year but we still need £2m-£3m.

"The complexity of the project is much greater than we at first thought because we have so much information and it has to go into digital format.

"The sadness is that the longer it takes, the fewer of the veterans will be around to celebrate it," he said.