An exhibit at the Canadian War Museum portrays bomber crews as war criminals and should be changed, a group of Second World War veterans told a Senate subcommittee Wednesday.

Representatives from the Royal Canadian Legion, the Air Force Association and the Aircrew Association asked the senators to help them get the museum display rewritten.

But the museum has said it's happy with the display and won't make any changes. Museum officials are to appear before the subcommittee for veterans' affairs in two weeks to give their side.

At issue is a display board and a couple of pictures.

The board says: "The value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested. Bomber Command's aim was to crush civilian morale and force Germany to surrender by destroying its cities and industrial installations. Although Bomber Command and American attacks left 600,000 Germans dead and more than five million homeless, the raids resulted in only small reductions in German war production until late in the war."

The photos show dead Germans amid the ruins.

"Why do the museum officials hype this statement except to reinforce the implication that Bomber Command aircrew were guilty of war crimes?" asked Donald Elliott, a 90-year-old airman who was shot down over Germany during a bombing raid and spent more than three years in prison camps.

He said the offending panel and photos imply that the airmen "had been party to the commission of a moral crime. Veterans see it as a bitter insult."

Those involved 'acting immorally': ex-pilot

Bill Carr, a Second World War reconnaissance pilot who eventually retired as a lieutenant-general, called the wording "a judgment call which suggests those who were involved were acting immorally and were nothing short of being war criminals to drop bombs to kill 'innocent' civilians."

The vets told the senators that the exhibit glosses over details such as the horrendous losses suffered by bomber crews — their chance of making it through a tour of 30 operations was one in four — and the contributions they made to the final victory.

The vets said they tried to meet museum officials to discuss a compromise in the wording and were flatly rebuffed. They said the museum enlisted four distinguished historians to comment on the exhibit. Two said it was fine and two said it should be changed.

David Bercuson of the University of Calgary said he found the offending paragraph "takes a side in the controversy and can be taken to imply that the bombing was a waste of resources and 'innocent' human life."

But Desmond Morton of McGill University said: "As I read the panel, it records and illustrates an irrefutable fact: There is a controversy."

Taking that out "because of pressure-group intervention would qualify as a suppression of historical fact," Morton said.