Almost 70 years after the Dams Raid, the Burpee family in Canada have now put some of their correspondence into the public domain. The first of these was sent to Lewis Burpee’s parents by his wife Lillian on 13 February 1943, while Lewis and his crew were still serving in 106 Squadron. Lillian, who was pregnant, was living in Newark while Lewis was serving at RAF Syerston. Note the chunks cut out by the censor!

On the Dams Raid, Burpee and his crew were part of the mobile reserve, five aircraft which left Scampton after midnight, They were to be given instructions as to which dam to attack when the results from the first and second waves had been assessed. In fact, he was shot down less than 2 hours after his take off and crashed on the edge of the heavily protected airfield at Gilze-Rijen in Holland.

This letter from Guy Gibson was sent to Mrs Burpee on 20 May 1943. It follows the standard format for letters of this kind, offering the chance that he had been captured, but pointing out that it was seen to crash, which led them to fear the worst.

This is followed by a letter to Burpee’s parents from an RCAF Chaplain. He refers to Lillian wanting to get posted back to Canada before her baby was born.

The final letter, sent in July, from the RCAF concerns Lewis’s “personal effects” and asks whether Lillian wants them forwarded directly to Canada, as by then it seems her trip back had been finalised.

And so I’m offering this simple phrase,
To kids from one to ninety-two,
Although it’s been said many times, many ways,
A Merry Christmas to you.

(Tormé and Wells, 1946)

I can’t believe that I missed this, more than three years ago! When filming their Last Chance to See natural history TV programme, Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine interviewed Peter Jackson in New Zealand. And there, right in the hangar, was one of the full size model Lancasters built for the Dambusters remake.
A very perceptive recent visitor to this blog has sent me these screen shots, taken from the programme which was first broadcast in 2009:

From these pictures, the level of detailing on the model seems extraordinary.
In recent interviews, Jackson has said that ten models have been built. It is noticeable, however, that only one seems to have been on show here.
By the way, this edition of Last Chance to See became notorious for a film clip showing the very rare kakapo flightless parrot attempting to mate with Mark Carwardine’s head. Far be it from me to suggest that you amuse yourselves by watching it again on Youtube.

Every year, the number of aircrew who served in the RAF during the Second World War sadly declines, and 2012 saw the passing of one wartime pilot who I came across when researching my book about David Maltby.

John (Tommy) Thompson was going through pilot training at the same time as David, and they met at the School of Air Navigation at Cranage in Cheshire. Tommy had a car and at one point, when they managed to scrounge enough petrol coupons, they shared a trip down south so that they could get home to their respective parents for a weekend’s leave. When I interviewed him in 2007, Tommy remembered that they put their navigation skills to the test on this trip, using charts from their course to compensate for the lack of signposts on the roads. They went on together to an Operational Training Unit at Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire, but their paths deviated at the end of this course with David being posted to final training on Hampdens and Tommy to Blenheims.

Tommy went onto operations with 18 Squadron, flying on a series of low level shipping strikes and high level Circus Raids along the Dutch and Belgian coastline until August 1941. The Blenheim squadrons suffered exceptional losses during this period.

He was then posted to Overseas Aircraft Departure Unit at Watton to collect new aircraft to ferry out to the Middle East Blenheim Unit. On 27 August 1941, on his way out to the Middle East, he suffered a forced landing at Aviero in Portugal, a neutral country.  He had to land on the beach and then set fire to his plane, which was full of fuel in the outer wings and packed with incendiary devices in the fuselage. He escaped from Portugal with the assistance of the Royal Navy to Gibraltar and returned to the UK in October of that year.

He was then posted to the Test Flight at 13 Maintenance Unit at Henlow. During the rest of the war, he flew in various air gunnery schools, air sea rescue flights, maintenance units, glider delivery units and air transport auxiliary units.

After the war, he carried on flying, at one point as a civilian pilot for the Red Devils parachute team. In 1968 he joined Hawker Siddeley in Hatfield as Flight Operations Officer and visited many parts of the world including making several deliveries into China.

After he retired, Tommy spotted an advert in an aviation magazine from a young Portuguese journalist requesting information about planes and crews who had made forced landings in Portugal during the second World War. He was able to help the author by providing not only information on his own forced landing in August 1941, but also researching and answering many other questions. He was subsequently invited to Portugal to launch the book and awarded a pair of Portuguese Air Force wings in a special ceremony.

[Thanks to Tommy's son, Roger Thompson, for the picture, and help with this article.]

Last Sunday’s BBC Antiques Roadshow came up with an interesting artefact which had a Dambuster connection. A viewer brought in the blade of an oar which she said her husband had found in a skip in Bletchley.

As can be seen from the screengrab above, this is inscribed with the names of the Oxford University eight who had taken part in the 1938 Boat Race. (For the benefit of non-UK readers: this is a race between Oxford and Cambridge University Boat Clubs, which takes place every spring on the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake.)
Roadshow expert Paul Atterbury was quick to note the possible significance of one of the names. The No. 2 oarsman is listed as H M Young (Trinity), weighing 12st 12lb, who later became famous as Melvin (‘Dinghy’) Young, pilot of AJ-A on the Dams Raid.
Paul Atterbury went on to give a brief summary of Young’s role: how he caused the initial breach in the Möhne Dam, then completed by David Maltby’s attack, and his tragic end, shot down over Holland on the way home.

However, a comparison with a picture of the genuine oar, shown above, which appears in Arthur Thorning’s 2008 biography, The Dambuster who Cracked the Dam, quickly shows that the Bletchley skip oar is not Young’s. Although the full oar isn’t shown in Thorning’s picture there are many obvious discrepancies between the style of lettering and the punctuation in both pictures. In fact, it doesn’t look at all like the work of a professional signwriter. Thorning also states that the oar was in the possession of relatives in California, along with other of Young’s rowing souvenirs.
Which leads us to a mystery. If this is not Young’s real oar, what is it? It could, of course, have belonged to one of the other seven oarsmen in the 1938 Oxford boat. Many, if not all, would have done what Young obviously did – had it inscribed as a souvenir.
But there is another intriguing possibility. One of the many stories told about the making of the 1955 film, The Dam Busters, is that the Young family lent the producers the actual oar. In one of the film’s last sequences, the camera shows some of the things which signify the crews who went missing – empty chairs in the mess, a ticking alarm clock, and poignantly, the name of H M Young on an oar.

Here is a screengrab from this scene. Although this is not of the highest quality, it’s plain that the lettering is consistent with that on the oar from the Bletchley skip. So it would seem that even if the film’s props department had a loan of the original oar, they decided it wasn’t suitable and made another one. They thereby caused yet another of The Dam Busters myths to be wrong. So, this could be the prop, created for the film and now left in a skip.
However, there’s one more thing, as Lt Columbo used to say. It’s possible that the oar from the Bletchley skip was not even used in the film. If you look carefully at the screengrab above, you can’t see the name of the Bow oarsman J L Garton at all, and there seems to be a larger gap between the centre spine of the blade and Young’s name than appears on the Antiques Roadshow picture. Is it possible that when director Michael Anderson and cinematographer Erwin Hillier came to shoot the actual scene, they discovered that Garton’s name got in the way and so a new prop without his name was created and used in the actual sequence?
Paul Atterbuy gave a valuation of somewhere between £200 and £500 if this had been the real Young oar. This seems a bit on the conservative side to me, given that people have paid considerably more than this for Gibson autographs and signed first editions of Paul Brickhill’s book. How much it would be worth as a film prop is probably anyone’s guess, even coming from a film as famous as The Dam Busters.

It now looks as though there will be a number of events in May to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Dams Raid. I am collating a list at the moment, but in the meantime I will be happy to advertise things as and when they are notified to me.

Here is some news from Herne Bay in Kent, the nearest town to Reculver, which was the site of several test drops of the “bouncing bomb” by the RAF in 1943. These took place under the active supervision of Barnes Wallis, and he is now remembered by a statue on the seafront, shown above. There will be a “full town” commemoration on Sunday 19 May. The organisers are hoping that the BBMF Lancaster will be able to participate, as it did in a similar event ten years ago, but this is not yet confirmed.

Pic: David Young via Arthur Thorning

Following my post from last month, I was recently sent a new picture, shown above, of the real oar used by Melvin (“Dinghy”) Young in the University Boat Race in 1938. The oar belongs to a member of the Young family who lives in California. Shown in the same picture is another souvenir oar used by Melvin when he rowed for his college, Trinity, in 1936. The picture was supplied by Arthur Thorning, Young’s biographer.

There are a number of differences between this oar and the mystery oar shown on the BBC Antiques Roadshow on 6 January, as can be seen when you look at the two side by side.

1. The shafts are on different sides: Young oar (YO) on the right, Antique Roadshow oar (ARO) on the left.
2. The colours are different. YO is dark (Oxford) blue, ARO is grey-blue (a colour that doesn’t belong to either Oxford or Cambridge).
3. YO has the full initials for H.A.W. Forbes, F.A.L. Waldron and G.J.P. Merifield, ARO has shortened these to H.A. Forbes, F.A. Waldron and J.P. Merifield.
4. YO has the President’s name on the right, ARO on the left (not seen in picture above but visible earlier in the video.)

However, there are some similarities between the two, which makes me think that the ARO may have been copied from the YO, or perhaps from a photograph (as Young’s oar was almost certainly already in the USA when the film was made.) These are principally in the abbreviations used and the style of the lettering. The college abbreviations are exactly the same (Magd., B.N.C., St. Ed. Hall) and the crew weights are also identical. A ‘blackletter’ (sometimes wrongly called Old English) font has been used for the heading and a serif font (in both roman and italic styles) for the remainder.

Comparison of the ARO with a still from the 1955 film The Dam Busters has convinced me that it is either a prop from the film, or a copy based on the film (although the whole oar is never shown in the film). The lettering looks identical, and as the film was shot in black and white, it would not have mattered that it was not an exact Oxford blue.

After the original Antiques Roadshow programme was transmitted, I contacted the production team and was sent a copy of a response by Paul Atterbury, the expert who assessed the oar:

Our recent Dambusters item has provoked a large response, which doesn’t surprise me. What does is the variety of responses, ideas and information we have received, implying a certain lack of agreement about this story. As a regular Roadshow specialist working in the miscellaneous section, I have to deal quickly, and as accurately as I can, with a wide and very unpredictable range of things brought in by the public. We have no advance knowledge of what is going to come in on the day, and only very limited time to carry out any research before something is filmed. We have to assume that the background information supplied by the owners is straightforward. In the case of the oar, it seemed to me a genuine blade, rather than something constructed as a film prop. Over the years I have seen plenty of them. The colours, and style of painting implied the right period, and the condition the right patina of age. Obviously, the names could have been added later to an existing blade, but it would seem an unnecessarily complicated, obscure and not particularly valuable copy or fake. Equally, the film company could have painted an existing oar, but that again seems an elaborate and expensive process for a few seconds of filming in black and white. As I said in the item, there was no guarantee this was Young’s blade, as there would have been seven others at the time, and it could have come from any of those families.

Any further information would be gratefully received!

Today’s Daily Telegraph cartoon would appear to be a comment on this story.

Amid accusations that defence policy is now a shambles, Downing Street attempted to “clarify” an apparent promise by David Cameron that overall spending on the military would rise in 2015-16.
On Wednesday Mr Cameron said that he would stand by a pledge he made in 2010 to provide “year-on-year real-terms growth in the defence budget in the years beyond 2015.” The Prime Minister’s renewal of that promise raised the hopes of military insiders over the coming Spending Review. Commanders had feared the review would mean yet more cuts in 2015-16 as George Osborne, the Chancellor, squeezes the ministry’s budget again.
However, the Government’s position descended into confusion on Thursday as No  10 attempted to argue that Mr Cameron’s commitment to increase spending “beyond 2015” does not apply to the 2015-16 financial year.
The Prime Minister’s references to spending beyond 2015 “means starting in 2016”, Downing Street said on Thursday. “He was referring to the financial year starting in 2016,” a spokesman said.

Thanks to Dick Budgen, who also comments that “the drawing is more accurate than one would usually expect”.

There will be a Dam Busters Commemoration in Lincoln Cathedral on the afternoon of Friday 17 May 2013 with the added bonus of a fly past by the Lancaster from the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. This event is entry by ticket only and there are 1000 free tickets available to the public to apply for (two only per household).

Tickets can only be applied for by post, and are on a first come, first served basis. Write to the address below enclosing a stamped addressed envelope and your contact details (telephone number/email address).

Write to
Dam Busters Cathedral Event
Lincolnshire Archives
St Rumbold Street
Lincoln LN2 5AB

Please do not call or email to reserve tickets. Only postal requests with stamped addressed envelopes will be processed, due to the high demand expected. Tickets will be sent out in March and will include further details of the event.

See the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage website for more details.

Tall, blond and good looking, Joe McCarthy was the image of an all-American war hero. A New Yorker with Irish roots, he became a champion swimmer and baseball player, and worked as a life guard at Coney Island. In his late teens, he and his friend Don Curtin became interested in flying and took lessons at Roosevelt Field, the busiest airfield in the USA.
When the war started, Joe made several attempts to join the US Air Corps but was rebuffed because he didn’t have a college degree. By May 1941, he was getting frustrated and so he and Don decided to take an overnight bus up to Ottawa in Canada, and became two of the almost 9000 American citizens who joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. Soon after Christmas they were qualified pilots and, with their new wings stitched on their uniforms, were on board a ship bound for Liverpool.
Joe’s story has now been told in a terrific new biography, Big Joe McCarthy: The RCAF’s American Dambuster by Dave Birrell. It is splendidly illustrated with many photos from the McCarthy family collection and other sources, and is a welcome addition to the growing number of biographies of individual Dambusters.
We learn about Joe’s time in 97 Squadron where by March 1943 he had completed a tour of 33 operations. How Guy Gibson phoned to ask him personally to join the new squadron he was setting up for a special secret operation. The low level training and the briefing where the crews were finally told what were their targets. And the shambles of his delayed take off on the raid, when his original aircraft was discovered to have a coolant leak.
Joe had been tasked to lead the section of five aircraft to attack the Sorpe Dam, and his replacement Lancaster was the only one which actually reached it. Despite his successful attack, and one later that night by fellow Canadian Ken Brown from the third wave, the dam was not breached but they were able to divert past the Möhne Dam on the way home and observe their colleagues’ successful work.
Joe was to fly an astonishing 67 operations before he was taken off active flying a month after D Day, along with Leonard Cheshire and Les Munro. All three protested, but the authorities were adamant. After the war, he went back to Canada and in order to stay in the RCAF took Canadian nationality. He finally retired in 1968.
Joe was a fine pilot and his logbooks recall that over his career he flew nearly 70 different types of aircraft. But he wasn’t only a flyer – he was a big man with a big sense of humour and a relaxed way of commanding those who served under him. His many exploits are well recorded here. The Verey cartridges dropped down a chimney into Cheshire’s fireplace and the horse ridden between into both the Sergeants and Officers Messes on a New Year’s Day after the war are two particular highlights.
Dave Birrell was a founding director of the Bomber Command Museum in Nanton, Alberta, and is an expert on the tremendous contribution of Canadian aircrew during the Second World War. Few deserve more praise than the big guy from New York.
Big Joe McCarthy by Dave Birrell is published by Red Kite and distributed by Wing Leader.

Retired RAF officers all over the country will have been harrumphing into their cornflakes this morning as yet more evidence of the decline of editorial standards in the national press is presented. This time it’s at the Daily Telegraph, a paper which once employed a real life Air Commodore as its Air Correspondent. To illustrate a story about the continued role of 617 Squadron , it chose a picture which purports to show three “Dambusters”. Unfortunately, only one of them actually served in 617 Squadron – Guy Gibson, in the centre of the trio above. On the right is Peter Ward-Hunt, who had a distinguished career as a bomber pilot in a number of squadrons, and whose obituary was in the Telegraph when he died in 2005. On the left is John Searby, who took over from Gibson as CO of 106 Squadron.
Memo to Telegraph subs: “There is the wonderful new invention called Google, you know. You can use it to check facts!”

If you fancy a walk along part of the Oyster Bay Trail, on the North Kent coast, why not relax for a moment or too on the new portrait bench just outside Reculver? It’s the brainchild of Canterbury City Council, who allowed the public to choose the three images who would represent the area’s culture and history. The winners were (from left to right) a woman in Roman dress, an oyster fisherman, and Dambuster pilot Warner (“Bill”) Ottley, who flew AJ-C on the Dams Raid and was shot down near Hamm. Bill Ottley’s family lived in Herne Bay, which is the local connection to the portrait bench. Although he was only 20, he had already completed a tour of operations in 207 Squadron, and been recommended for a DFC.
The picture of Ottley on which this bench portrait is based was supplied to the council by Alex Bateman, long time friend of this blog.
If you are quick, you can enter a draw to win £250 simply by taking a photo of someone on the bench and sending it to Canterbury City Council. Closing date 31 March!

Below is a list of the events so far planned for the 70th anniversary of the Dams Raid. Please note that many are still subject to confirmation, especially the flyover at the Derwent Reservoir on Thursday 16 May.
This list will now be updated regularly, and you will be able to see the latest version by clicking on the category Dambusters 70th anniversary below.

Monday 8 April
RAF Cranwell, Lincolnshire
7.30pm
Trenchard Lecture
Debate between Professor Eric Grove, University of Salford, James Holland, Author: The success of the Dambusters raid

Sunday 12 May
RAF Museum Cosford
2.00pm
Concert

Monday 13 May-Friday 17 May
RAF Museum London
10.00am-6.00pm daily
Exhibition

Thursday 16 May
Derwent Reservoir, Derbyshire
Time to be confirmed
BBMF Lancaster flypast

Thursday 16 May
RAF Museum Cosford
5.00pm
Special talk: ‘Operation Chastise – 70 years on, the successful failure’

Friday 17 May
Lincoln Cathedral
afternoon
Dam Busters commemoration service (Ticket only: apply by post!)

Sunday 19 May
Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire
Time to be confirmed
Service and unveiling of 617 Squadron post World War 2 memorial

Sunday 19 May
Herne Bay, Kent
Full town commemoration
Details to be confirmed

Another example, this time from the Daily Mail.

The last of the Dambusters has spoken for the first time how he celebrated the squadron’s heroic raid – with a nice cup of tea.

I’m happy to say that there are three Dambusters still with us: George ‘Johnny’ Johnson in England, Les Munro in New Zealand and Fred Sutherland in Canada. George Johnson has told his story a number of times.

Almost 70 years after the night-time bombing attacks, Squadron Leader George ‘Johnny’ Johnson, 91, told of the daring raid over occupied territory that dealt a decisive blow that crippled the Nazi war effort.
George was festooned with a raft of medals including a Distinguished Flying Medal for his part in 617 Squadron’s daring 1943 blitz on the Nazi-controlled dams along the Ruhr Valley in Germany, destroying their hydro-electric source of power.

George’s ‘raft of medals’ are for his war service as a whole. He was awarded the DFM for his part in the attack on the Sorpe Dam. The concept of any one airman getting more than one decoration for a single operation is ridiculous. It did occasionally happen that an airman got more than one decoration for an operation, but it was very rare (see comment below).

Widower George, who lives in Bristol, was a sergeant at the time of the raids, conducted under the name Operation Chastise, which smashed the Mohne, Sorpe and Eder dams.
He said: ‘We were about half an hour late because our plane had a hydraulic leak and we had to swap.

The Sorpe Dam was attacked, but remained intact. It was not ‘smashed’.

‘We took off at 22.01, and flew in over Sorpe dam in brilliant moonlight. We had to get the aim right – we went in six or seven times and I’d shout ‘Dummy Run’.
‘It was a totally different dam from the other dams. It was impossible to fly low over, so it had to be a drop, not a spinning bomb.’
Piloted by Joe McCarthy, the plane nicknamed ‘T for Tommy’ was one of five planes that made it to the dam, which was the most difficult of the three targets to crack.

Three aircraft made it to the Sorpe Dam. Only two aircraft bombed the Sorpe Dam (see comment below). T for Tommy was not a nickname for the aircraft piloted by Joe McCarthy. It was its call sign.

It took bombardier George and his crew nine attempts to fly at a perilous 30ft, before the bomb, codenamed Upkeep, was finally loosed, seconds before they had to pull up to avoid smashing into the hillside behind the dam.

Bombardier is an American term for what the RAF called ‘air bombers’ early in the war. By 1943 they were usually referred to as ‘bomb aimers’.

He said: ‘I could see where to drop and shouted ‘Bomb Gone’ to cheers of ‘Thank Christ’ from the crew who were yelling for me to get the bomb out.
‘At 00.46 on May 17 we dropped our bomb with 8,500lb of explosives.’
George added: ‘There was a spout of water 1,000ft high. We circled and the dam crumbled about 10 yards wide.
‘But it didn’t seem as if the other five aircraft had been there. We needed six bombs to crack the dam and the water would do the rest.’
After smashing the dam, the heroic airmen flew their Lancaster bomber over the Mohne Dam, which had been blown by another plane in the same daring raid.
The Sorpe dam was badly damaged by the daring night-time raid, orchestrated by wing commander Guy Gibson and bouncing bomb inventor Barnes Wallace.

Some confusion in the last two paragraphs here. Was the dam ‘smashed’ or ‘badly damaged’? Oh, and it’s Barnes Wallis, not Wallace.

George said: ‘I will never forget the sight. It was like an inland sea with all that water overflowing.
‘It gave us a lot of satisfaction when we heard over the radio that the Eder had been breached as well.’
It was only when they flew back to RAF Scrapton in Lincolnshire that the brave crew realised they had been hit several times by an armoured train on their way to the dams, and the pilot’s chair was pockmarked with bullet holes.

It’s Scampton, not Scrapton.

He said: ‘I was tired and exhausted – I went to the mess and had bacon and powdered scrambled egg and a cup of tea. It tasted good.’
The five-hour raid came at a heavy price – 53 of the 133 brave airmen, hand-picked for the secret mission, did not come home.
George said: ‘The waitresses in the sergeants’ mess were all in tears as so many places were empty.’
The brave airman married sweetheart Gwyn, a phone operator in the Women’s Royal Air Force, days before the sortie, after being given special permission from chiefs despite all leave being cancelled.
After narrowly avoiding death on an eye-watering 50 missions during his 22 years’ service with the RAF, George became a teacher.

Did the Second World War really last 22 years? George’s ‘eye-watering 50 missions’ were of course confined to his war time service between 1940 and 1945. He stayed on in the RAF until 1962, and rose to the rank of Squadron Leader.

Great-grandfather George, who became a widower when Gwyn died of cancer in 2005, is helping Lord of the Rings filmmaker Peter Jackson with his scheduled remake of the classic 1955 Dam Busters film.
He said: ‘I feel honoured and proud to have been lucky enough to take part in that raid.
‘It proved to Hitler and the Germans what they thought was impregnable could be destroyed by the RAF.’

Amen to that.

Our Friends in the North, aka the folks at the Bomber Command Museum of Canada, have produced the poster above commemorating the 30 Canadians who took part in the Dams Raid. If you are able to get to Nanton, Alberta, on Saturday 11 May you will be able to see a display honouring all 30 plus various other attractions. Most exciting of all may well be the sight of restored Lancaster FM159, which will have all its engines fired up and running in honour of the Dambusters. A sight worth seeing (and hearing)!

One of the saddest jobs on any Second World War bomber squadron must have been filling in the logbooks of those who didn’t return from operations. Here, courtesy of his nephew Hartley Garshowitz, is the last page of Wt Off Albert Garshowitz’s logbook from May 1943. Garshowitz was the wireless operator in Flt Lt Astell’s Lancaster AJ-B, which collided with a pylon on the outward flight to the Möhne Dam.
Some points to note:

• Garshowitz appears to have done all the totalising of hours himself before he took off on the Dams Raid.
• The entry in red, in someone else’s handwriting after the raid, says ‘”Ops” Eder missing’, when his aircraft was actually tasked with attacking the Möhne.
• The spaces left for signature by the Flight Commander and the Squadron CO have both been completed by David Maltby, who became Commander of A Flight after the raid. Gibson was obviously not available when this book (one of 53 altogether) was presented for inspection.

There is more about Albert Garshowitz and his good friend Frank Garbas, front gunner in AJ-B, in this entry on the Canadian Bomber Command Museum website.

History buff Ross Corbett has set up an fascinating new website called World War II Discovery, and has written several posts of interest to Dambuster enthusiasts. He recently visited RAF Scampton, and had a tour of the some of the areas which are open as a Heritage Centre. Tours are available. but only by appointment as Scampton is a working RAF base and the home of the Red Arrows.
The first floor room which was once Guy Gibson’s office is now restored, and looks much as it did on the day in July 1943 when the photograph shown below, of Gibson and his new Flight Commander Sqn Ldr David Maltby, was taken.

IWM TR1122

Ross has also been to the Derwent Dam and the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre at East Kirkby where he saw original Lancaster ‘Just Jane’.

One of this blog’s growing number of German readers, Volker Schürmann, has contacted us to say that he plans to commemorate the Dams Raid crash of AJ-E on 16 May. He is writing a report for a local history club in Haldern, where he lives.
AJ-E, piloted by Norman Barlow, was the first of the five aircraft tasked with attacking the Sorpe Dam to leave Scampton (after Joe McCarthy was delayed by a fault in his designated Lancaster) but came down shortly before midnight. It is not clear whether it was shot down or crashed after hitting high tension electric wires. In any case, the top secret mine did not explode, so within a few days of the Dams Raid, the Germans were able to find out exactly the full details of what had been used.
Volker has also unearthed this brief biography of AJ-E’s flight engineer Leslie Whillis, for whom the Dams Raid was his 23rd operation, in a report of an auction held in 2001.
Any more information about events in Germany to mark the 70th anniversary of the raid would be gratefully received. Please contact me here.

During the next nineteen weeks I will be publishing an article about each one of the 133 aircrew from 617 Squadron who took part in the Dams Raid (Operation Chastise) on 16/17 May 1943, at the rate of one a day. These will be titled ‘Dambuster of the Day’.
Above is shown the order for the operation as it appeared on squadron noticeboards on the morning of the raid. For security reasons it was merely titled ‘Night Flying Programme’. The typed programme was kept by Squadron Adjutant Flt Lt Harry Humphries, and is now in the possession of Grantham Museum.
Each article will include links to other material online about each man, and I hope that readers will add further links in the comments on each piece. In that way, the blog entries will serve as a tribute to all the people who took part, in this the 70th anniversary year.
A complete list of the 133 also appears below.
The names appear in the order of the three designated ‘waves’: the first tasked to attack the Möhne and Eder dams, the second to attack the Sorpe, and the third the mobile reserve. Each aircraft in the wave is then listed in the order it finally took off, which differs slightly from the list in the programme above.
As each article appears, the list below will be edited to provide a link to the relevant blog entry.

AJ-G
First wave: First aircraft to attack Möhne Dam. Mine exploded short of the dam.
Wg Cdr G P Gibson DSO & Bar DFC & Bar Pilot
Sgt J Pulford Flight engineer
Plt Off H T Taerum Navigator
Flt Lt R E G Hutchison DFC Wireless operator
Plt Off F M Spafford DFM Bomb aimer
Flt Sgt G A Deering Front gunner
Flt Lt R D Trevor-Roper DFM Rear gunner

AJ-M
First wave: Second aircraft to attack Möhne Dam. Aircraft hit by flak. Mine dropped late, bounced over dam. Aircraft crashed on far side of dam.
Flt Lt J V Hopgood DFC & Bar Pilot
Sgt C Brennan Flight engineer
Flg Off K Earnshaw Navigator
Sgt J W Minchin Wireless operator
Flt Sgt J W Fraser Bomb aimer
Plt Off G H F G Gregory DFM Front gunner
Plt Off A F Burcher DFM Rear gunner

AJ-P
First wave: Third aircraft to attack Möhne Dam. Mine veered left after dropping and exploded at side of dam.
Flt Lt H B Martin DFC Pilot
Plt Off I Whittaker Flight engineer
Flt Lt J F Leggo DFC Navigator
Flg Off L Chambers Wireless operator
Flt Lt R C Hay DFC Bomb aimer
Plt Off B T Foxlee DFM Front gunner
Flt Sgt T D Simpson Rear gunner

AJ-A
First wave: Fourth aircraft to attack Möhne Dam. Mine dropped accurately, causing small breach. Aircraft crashed on return flight.
Sqn Ldr H M Young DFC & Bar Pilot
Sgt D T Horsfall Flight engineer
Flt Sgt C W Roberts Navigator
Sgt L W Nichols Wireless operator
Flg Off V S MacCausland Bomb aimer
Sgt G A Yeo Front gunner
Sgt W Ibbotson Rear gunner

AJ-J
First wave: Fifth aircraft to attack Möhne Dam. Mine dropped accurately, causing larger breach, followed by dam collapse.
Flt Lt D J H Maltby DFC Pilot
Sgt W Hatton Flight engineer
Sgt V Nicholson Navigator
Sgt A J B Stone Wireless operator
Plt Off J Fort Bomb aimer
Sgt V Hill Front gunner
Sgt H T Simmonds Rear gunner

AJ-L
First wave: First aircraft to attack Eder Dam. Mine dropped accurately but no breach caused.
Flt Lt D J Shannon DFC Pilot
Sgt R J Henderson Flight engineer
Flg Off D R Walker DFC Navigator
Flg Off B Goodale DFC Wireless operator
Flt Sgt L J Sumpter Bomb aimer
Sgt B Jagger Front gunner
Flg Off J Buckley Rear gunner

AJ-Z
First wave. Second aircraft to attack Eder Dam. Mine overshot. Aircraft damaged, and shot down on return flight.
Sqn Ldr H E Maudslay DFC Pilot
Sgt J Marriott DFM Flight engineer
Flg Off R A Urquhart DFC Navigator
WO A P Cottam Wireless operator
Plt Off M J D Fuller Bomb aimer
Flg Off W J Tytherleigh DFC Front gunner
Sgt N R Burrows Rear gunner

AJ-B
First wave. Crashed on outward flight.
Flt Lt W Astell DFC Pilot
Sgt J Kinnear Flight engineer
Plt Off F A Wile Navigator
WO A A Garshowitz Wireless operator
Flg Off D Hopkinson Bomb aimer
Flt Sgt F A Garbas Front gunner
Sgt R Bolitho Rear gunner

AJ-N
First wave. Third aircraft to attack Eder Dam. Mine dropped accurately causing breach.
Plt Off L G Knight Pilot
Sgt R E Grayston Flight engineer
Flg Off H S Hobday Navigator
Flt Sgt R G T Kellow Wireless operator
Flg Off E C Johnson Bomb aimer
Sgt F E Sutherland Front gunner
Sgt H E O’Brien Rear gunner

AJ-E
Second wave. Crashed on outward flight.
Flt Lt R N G Barlow DFC Pilot
Plt Off S L Whillis Flight engineer
Flg Off P S Burgess Navigator
Flg Off C R Williams DFC Wireless operator
Plt Off A Gillespie Bomb aimer
Flg Off H S Glinz Front gunner
Sgt J R G Liddell Rear gunner

AJ-W
Second wave. Aircraft badly damaged by flak on outward flight. Returned to base with mine intact.
Flt Lt J L Munro Pilot
Sgt F E Appleby Flight engineer
Flg Off F G Rumbles Navigator
WO P E Pigeon Wireless operator
Sgt J H Clay Bomb aimer
Sgt W Howarth Front gunner
Flt Sgt H A Weeks Rear gunner

AJ-K
Second wave. Crashed on outward flight.
Plt Off V W Byers Pilot
Sgt A J Taylor Flight engineer
Flg Off J H Warner Navigator
Sgt J Wilkinson Wireless operator
Plt Off A N Whittaker Bomb aimer
Sgt C McA Jarvie Front gunner
Flt Sgt J McDowell Rear gunner

AJ-H
Second wave. Aircraft badly damaged and mine lost, flying low over sea on outward flight. Returned to base.
Plt Off G Rice Pilot
Sgt E C Smith Flight engineer
Flg Off R MacFarlane Navigator
WO C B Gowrie Wireless operator
WO J W Thrasher Bomb aimer
Sgt T W Maynard Front gunner
Sgt S Burns Rear gunner

AJ-T
Second wave. First aircraft to attack Sorpe Dam. Mine dropped successfully but failed to breach dam.
Flt Lt J C McCarthy DFC Pilot
Sgt W G Radcliffe Flight engineer
Flt Sgt D A MacLean Navigator
Flt Sgt L Eaton Wireless operator
Sgt G L Johnson Bomb aimer
Sgt R Batson Front gunner
Flg Off D Rodger Rear gunner

AJ-C
Third wave. Crashed on outward flight.
Plt Off W H T Ottley DFC Pilot
Sgt R Marsden Flight engineer
Flg Off J K Barrett DFC Navigator
Sgt J Guterman DFM Wireless operator
Flt Sgt T B Johnston Bomb aimer
Sgt H J Strange Front gunner
Sgt F Tees Rear gunner

AJ-S
Third wave. Crashed on outward flight.
Plt Off L J Burpee DFM Pilot
Sgt G Pegler Flight engineer
Sgt T Jaye Navigator
Plt Off L G Weller Wireless operator
Flt Sgt J L Arthur Bomb aimer
Sgt W C A Long Front gunner
WO J G Brady Rear gunner

AJ-F
Third wave. Second aircraft to attack Sorpe Dam. Mine dropped successfully but failed to breach dam.
Flt Sgt K W Brown Pilot
Sgt H B Feneron Flight engineer
Sgt D P Heal Navigator
Sgt H J Hewstone Wireless operator
Sgt S Oancia Bomb aimer
Sgt D Allatson Front gunner
Flt Sgt G S McDonald Rear gunner

AJ-O
Third wave. Only aircraft to attack Ennepe Dam. Mine dropped successfully but failed to breach dam.
Flt W C Townsend DFM Pilot
Sgt D J D Powell Flight engineer
Plt Off C L Howard Navigator
Flt Sgt G A Chalmers Wireless operator
Sgt C E Franklin DFM Bomb aimer
Sgt D E Webb Front gunner
Sgt R Wilkinson Rear gunner

AJ-Y
Third wave. Did not reach Sorpe Dam because of navigation problems and weather conditions. Returned with mine intact.
Flt Sgt C T Anderson Pilot
Sgt R C Paterson Flight engineer
Sgt J P Nugent Navigator
Sgt W D Bickle Wireless operator
Sgt G J Green Bomb aimer
Sgt E Ewan Front gunner
Sgt A W Buck Rear gunner

Wing Cdr G P Gibson DSO & Bar DFC & Bar
Pilot
Lancaster serial number: ED932/G
Call sign: AJ-G
First wave: First aircraft to attack Möhne Dam. Mine exploded short of the dam.

Guy Gibson was born on 12 August 1918 in Simla, India, where his father worked for the Imperial Indian Forest Service. He didn’t set foot in England until he was brought on a holiday to his grandparents’ house in Cornwall at the age of four. At six, his mother and her three children made a permanent move back and he was sent off to boarding school, first to schools in Cornwall and Kent and then, aged 14, to St Edward’s School in Oxford.
Gibson’s time at St Edward’s was not particularly distinguished, but it was there that he first became interested in flying. He wrote to Captain ‘Mutt’ Summers at Vickers (who later flew the Wellington which dropped the first test ‘bouncing bomb’) for advice on how to become a pilot. Summers told him that he should join the RAF. Gibson’s first application was refused but he tried again and was accepted onto the No 6 Flying Training Course at Yatesbury in Wiltshire in November 1936. This was a civilian course, run under the RAF expansion scheme. Pilots who qualified from it were then recruited directly into the RAF and given a short service commission. Gibson became an acting Pilot Officer in early 1937, and then went off on further training until he was sent to his first posting, 83 (Bomber) Squadron at Turnhouse in Scotland, in September 1937.
In March 1938, 83 Squadron was transferred a couple of hundred miles south, to the newly built RAF station at Scampton, Lincolnshire. On the day the war started, 3 September 1939, Gibson piloted one of the first nine RAF aircraft to see action, in a raid on German shipping. Apart from one short break, he was to stay at Scampton, flying Hampdens, until he completed his first tour of operations in September 1940.
Although he was supposed to go on a rest period, instructing at a training unit, this only lasted a few weeks as he was drafted over to night fighters due to a chronic shortage of experienced pilots. He joined 29 Squadron and flew some 90 operations in Beaufighters, leaving in March 1942. Without much more than a few days break, he was then given his first post as a squadron commanding officer, 106 Squadron based at RAF Coningsby. After a few months, the squadron received its first Lancaster bombers – an aircraft widely regarded as a cut above anything else that had been used before. By early March 1943, he had completed another full tour.
He was expecting a rest from operations, but instead he was summoned to a meeting with the Commanding Officer of 5 Group, Sir Ralph Cochrane. ‘How would you like the idea of doing one more trip?’ Cochrane asked, and Gibson, who hated the idea of being away from the action, readily agreed.
Thus was 617 Squadron born, and the legend began to grow. Based at Scampton again, Gibson, with the support of two excellent flight commanders, Melvin Young and Henry Maudslay, took only two months to mould almost 150 aircrew into a force which would successfully deliver an innovative weapon against a series of targets using astonishing airmanship. On the evening of 16 May 1943, nineteen aircraft carrying the ‘bouncing bomb’ designed by Barnes Wallis took off to attack the great dams of the Ruhr valley. He was the first to attack the Möhne Dam, but his mine exploded short of its wall. When the next pilot, John Hopgood, also failed Gibson took it on himself to fly alongside each aircraft to divert the enemy flak as Mick Martin, Melvin Young and David Maltby each made their bombing runs. For this, and his leadership of the raid as a whole, he was awarded the VC.
After the raid, Gibson was taken off operations and was employed almost as a full time publicist for Bomber Command and the RAF. He made public appearances all over the country, and was then sent on a speaking tour of Canada and the USA where he met politicians and film stars, but also found time to see ordinary people like the mother of Harlo Taerum, his navigator on the raid. He signed her scrapbook a few days before Harlo was killed, in a costly raid on the Dortmund Ems canal.
By January 1944 he was employed in a desk job in Whitehall, but his real task was to write a draft of his book, Enemy Coast Ahead. Much of the text about 617 Squadron was pulled together from material ghostwritten for him, but the earlier sections are probably Gibson’s own work. He also found time both to be interviewed for the Desert Island Discs radio programme and to be selected as a Conservative candidate for the next General Election.
He changed his mind about going into politics within a few months, but he was still frustrated about being kept off operations. By the late summer he had persuaded the authorities to let him fly on active service again, and he was assigned to an operation on 19 September 1944, to Mönchengladbach and Rheydt. Gibson was to be the controller in a Mosquito, in charge of other Mosquitoes who were marking the target for the main bomber force.
What happened that night is the subject of much speculation. His aircraft crashed near Steenbergen in Holland, killing both Gibson and his navigator James Warwick. It may have been the Mosquito just ran out of fuel because Gibson didn’t know how to switch fuel tanks, or he could have been shot down by flak or even, in a ‘friendly fire’ episode, by one of his own main force bombers.
Gibson was admired by many of his peers and associates, but not by all of them. ‘Those who liked or loved him did so intensely’ writes his biographer, Richard Morris. ‘More looked upon him with a wary respect. Many thought him unpleasantly rebarbative. A few found him unsufferable.’ But he was a wartime warrior with a formidable record: few matched his two tours of bomber operations in Hampdens and Lancasters and 90 patrols in a Beaufighter. To quote Morris again: ‘He achieved greatness because his combat experience was backed by a practical application of rules of leadership which he had learned: the need to unify his squadrons behind clear aims, to communicate his aims with confidence and to balance discipline with the enlistment of hearts.’

More about Gibson online:
Wikipedia
Medals at RAF Museum
Commonwealth War Graves Commission listing

Decoration awarded for Operation Chastise: VC
KIA 20 September 1944
Rank and decorations as of 16 May 1943.

Sources:
Richard Morris, Guy Gibson, Penguin 1995
John Sweetman, The Dambusters Raid, Cassell 2002
The information above has been taken from the books listed and a number of online sources. Apologies for any errors or omissions. Please add any corrections or links to further material in the comments section below.