Dambusters raid hero’s medals set to land £150k
HIS plane was last to take off on the RAF’s most celebrated mission – and the last to limp home to heroes’ welcomes for the crew.
With typical understatement, George ‘Jock’ Chalmers wrote in his log after the Dambusters raid: ‘Low level attack on dams in Ruhr – successful.’
Now, 75 years after the legendary attack struck a blow to the heart of Hitler’s war effort, the Scottish airman’s medals are up for sale.
On completion of the 1943 raid, Flight Sergeant Chalmers, from Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, was awarded a Distinguished Flying Medal. Later in the war he added a Distinguished Flying Cross to his tally.
The medals were sold by his family before he died in 2002 and have now been unearthed by medal dealer War & Son, which expects them to sell for £150,000.
Wireless operator Mr Chalmers was one of 133 crew aboard 19 Lancasters of No 617 Squadron which took off on Operation Chastise to destroy German dams with Barnes Wallis’s bouncing bomb. Eight planes and 56 men never returned.
He was aboard a Lancaster codenamed ‘O for Orange’ which targeted its six ton bomb on the Ennepe dam in the Ruhr Valley but, ultimately, did not damage it. On the return journey the bomber came under ferocious attack from German planes. He recalled the Lancaster was flying so low over the Dutch coast that he saw enemy shells bouncing off the sea.
One of the plane’s four engines had to be shut down, but they eventually made it back to RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire – where the crew were welcomed by head of Bomber Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris.
Mr Chalmers’ RAF log book is also on sale. By the end of the war he had clocked up more than 12,000 flying hours over 60 sorties.
Steve Nuwar, of War & Son, said of Mr Chalmers’ medals: ‘I can’t think of anything we will ever own that will be more important than them (the medals).
‘Jock Chalmers’ plane was the second-most decorated plane that took part in the raid. It was the last up and the last down and it limped home on three engines.’
After the war Mr Chalmers worked for the civil service in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, and retired in 1984.
He had five sons and four daughters with wife Alma.