A counterblast against the'politically-motivated backstabbing' of the men who flew with Bomber Command has been launched by the widow of a Newport aircrew member.

Mrs Muriel Rondel, whose late husband Thomas flew more than 50 missions as a tailgunner in a Halifax against the Germans in the Second World War, said the new round of sniping demeaned more than 50,000 aircrew who had sacrificed their lives.

Pill-born Tom Rondel worked for the gas board in Newport before the war at the outbreak of which he volunteered for aircrew duty with the RAF.

After training in South Africa he was posted to 640 Squadron, Bomber Command which flew Halifaxes from Leconfield in Yorkshire against targets in the Ruhr and elsewhere in occupied Europe.

The role of British and Commonwealth bomber crews came under attack in the German tabloid press during the Queen's recent visit with some newspapers calling upon Britain to make an apology for the bombing.

No such apology was asked for by the German government, although the Queen did express her regret at the loss of German civilian life.

"The attacks made by some people against Bomber Command are ill-timed and have made a lot of people like me angry," said Mrs Rondel, of Glasllwch Crescent, Newport.

Thomas Rondel went to St Michael's School in Pill and afterwards to Newport Technical College.

In the early part of the war he flew in twin-engine Wellington Bombers but on transferring to 640 flew in Halifax'V for Victor' the pilot of which was Robin Carey-Evans, the grandson of the former prime minister Lloyd George.

Mrs Rondel met her husband after the war just as he was about to be demobilised. Several of his former crew mates - two of whom were Canadians - have paid vists to Newport. V-Victor's skipper, Robin Carey-Evans, now lives in Aust-ralia.

Anne Rondel, one of Thomas and Muriel's two daughters, said her father never spoke much about the war.

"He was a philospophical sort of a man who saw that he had a job to do and got on and did it.

"He was a witty man. When people sang Lloyd George Knew My Father he would say,'Ah, but I flew with his grandson'.

"I remember him telling us that he had been sick and had missed a flight. To try to catch up with the number of missions he volunteered to fly with another crew but at the last minute their regular gunner discharged himself from hospital.

"The crew was shot down. If my father had gone on the flight he would have died.

"He didn't make a fuss about the war at all. In fact he let us play with his badges and he let me draw pictures in his flying log-book."

In the years after the war Mr Rondel was a keen member of the Newport branch of the Royal Air Forces Association being at various times chairman and vice-president. He worked for the gas board until his retirement. He died 18 months ago. His Warrant Officer's gunners' brevet, together with the four medals issued to British servicemen after 1945, hang in a case on Mr Rondel's living room wall.

"But there is a medal missing," she said.