‘All I want is a medal for the Dambusters’
On the eve of his 100th birthday, Johnny Johnson tells Joe Shute why his crew should be honoured
The last Dambuster Johnny Johnson is reclined in an armchair in his Bristol care home, contemplating how many times he has cheated death. “A cat!” exclaims the soon-to-be centenarian, grinning at the comparison. “Yes, that’s about right. I think I’ve had my share.”
There was the time in 1942 when the Lancaster Bomber, in which he was returning from a night-time raid over Germany, was struck by a bolt of lightning. Another near-death experience occurred when an aircraft lost both port engines over the North Sea, but somehow his pilot and great friend Joe Mccarthy still managed to land.
And there was also the time when their Lancaster Bomber was strafed by an armoured goods train. After a bumpy landing at RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, where 617 Squadron was based in the run-up to the Dambusters raid in 1943, it was discovered the flak had not just burst a tyre but torn through the undercarriage and wing, leaving bullet holes inches above the heads of the crew.
His war stories span nine lives and more, and on November 25, Johnson will turn 100. It is a source of sadness that he should reach the milestone with none of his former comrades there to see it. In 2019, Johnson had the unwanted honour of becoming the very last surviving airman to take part in the Dambusters raid after the Canadian air gunner Fred Sutherland died at the age of 95.
Instead, he will celebrate with a party at his care home, surrounded by family. He has three children, eight grandchildren and 19 great grandchildren with his beloved wife, Gwyn, who died in 2005 after 62 years of marriage.
Looking around his room, which is filled with photographs and memorabilia from his 22-year RAF career, Johnson admits there is only one birthday present which he would truly like – a campaign medal for the veterans of Bomber Command, 55,573 of whom were killed during the Second World War.
On Armistice Day, he says, the men he served with are foremost in his thoughts. On the evening of the Dambusters raid alone, 53 were killed and a further three taken as prisoners of war. As the last torchbearer and testament to their extraordinary sacrifice, Johnson says there are two ways he would like the Dambusters to be remembered: “The tremendous loss – and also the collective effort.”
Despite this enormous sacrifice, official squeamishness about the bombing of German cities has meant the crew were never awarded a campaign medal. In a belated attempt to appease campaigners in 2013, David
Cameron, then prime minister, commissioned a Bomber Command clasp instead, although many veterans – Johnson included – deemed it an insult. He says he has never taken his out of his box.
“The medal would be the highlight of my life,” Johnson says. “I feel very disgusted, in fact, that politicians cannot recognise those Bomber Command aircrews who gave their lives for this country during the war. A medal should be organised and issued as of now with a ceremony to represent those people who gave their all for this country at that time.”
On the subject of belated accolades, there have also been growing calls for Johnson (who has already been appointed MBE) to receive a knighthood. A recent petition amassed more than 300,000 signatures, and the experience of Captain Sir Tom Moore during the pandemic has demonstrated how the Palace can expedite special cases. Even so, Johnson has little desire for any personal acclaim. “I think I’ve had my share,” he smiles.
One communiqué from Buckingham Palace which will be making its way to him shortly is his 100th birthday message from the Queen. Johnson enjoyed an audience with Her Majesty at Windsor Castle when he received his MBE in 2017. “She opened up by saying, ‘I’ve heard a lot about you, but I want to hear it from you’,” Johnson recalls. “I talked, she listened.”
In particular, the Queen was enthralled by Johnson’s retelling of the night on May 16, 1943, when 617 Squadron used the ingenious bouncing bombs in a bid to breach the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe dams in a daredevil attack which was to prove one of the most memorable operations of the Second
World War.
Focusing their attack on the
Sorpe dam, Johnson, who was the bomb aimer, demanded nine dummy runs on the target to ensure they could hit their mark – much to the consternation of his crew. Recounting the story he told the Queen, he says: “After the sixth or seventh time, the rear gunner shouted: ‘Won’t somebody get that bomb out of here?’”
I last met Johnson in 2019, shortly after he had become the last Dambuster. Since then, he has moved out of the supported accommodation where he was previously living and into a nearby care home, where he has been throughout the pandemic and which mercifully has been spared the worst ravages of Covid-19. “I’m not afraid of it,” he says of the virus. “But at the same time I expect being penned in here, as we were to start with, saved me.”
He has lost a bit of mobility since our previous meeting, but otherwise is remarkably unbowed by age. Dressed in his blazer and the maroon tie of 617 Squadron he remains a gleeful raconteur, still enjoys the occasional whisky, and keeps an open bottle of Rioja by his bed.
Is the man who has dodged it so successfully up until now, worried about death, I ask? “I don’t see any point in worrying about what might happen,” he says, adding that was a mantra he quickly learnt in Bomber Command where empty spaces around the breakfast table following the previous night’s mission were an all too common sight.
It was only following the death of his wife that Johnson first started to share his war stories, but he admits discussing the emotional impact of such losses does not come easy, even now. In part, he puts this down to a miserable childhood, during which he learned from a young age to suppress his feelings.
Johnson’s mother died shortly before his third birthday of what he now understands to be renal failure, and he has only one memory of her – sharing an embrace on her hospital bed. He and his five siblings were raised in Lincolnshire by their father Charles, a farm foreman who Johnson remembers as cruel and violent.
Johnson escaped the life of agricultural labour his father had envisaged for him when a teacher at his primary school secured him a place at Lord Wandsworth college in Long Sutton, Hampshire, which offered free schooling to children of agricultural families who had lost a parent.
After school he worked briefly as a parks attendant in Basingstoke before volunteering to join the RAF, to “give Hitler a bloody nose”.
The strength of bond between crew members was, he says, the first thing that struck him when he was posted to Bomber Command. While he and his father, who died in 1957, were never reconciled, Johnson considers himself fortunate to have formed unyielding ties with the men who, like him, “thought it was time we did something to help the
country”.