Heroes are ‘reunited’ by royal artist for exhibition

ALL 133 members of Royal Air Force 617 Squadron, the Dam Busters, have been “reunited” in an art installation to mark the 75th anniversary of the raids.

George “Johnny” Johnson, the 96-year-old lone British survivor of the raids over the Ruhr, unveiled an exhibition yesterday by Dan Llywelyn Hall, who in 2013 became the 133rd artist to paint the Queen.

Family members of the Dam Busters also attended the two unveiling ceremonies, one at the International Bomber Command Centre in Lincoln, the other at the Dam Busters Inn in Scampton.

“Having Johnny attend both unveilings of all the 133 men he would have last seen 75 years ago on that fateful day was a moving experience for me,” Mr Llywelyn Hall said.

“It brought tears to the eyes of several family members, 48 of whom travelled to unveil their relative’s portrait.”

Mr Llywelyn Hall had a sitting with Mr Johnson, from Bristol, in February and painted the other portraits from archive pictures and research. The artist, whose exhibition,

Dam Busters Reunited, is on display at Prospero World in London’s Mayfair, hails from Barry, near Cardiff, which was also the home of Gordon Yeo, a front gunner in the first wave of bombers to attack the Mohne Dam, and the only Welshman on the mission.

He died at 20 when his plane was shot down over the Dutch coast and crashed just off Castricum aan Zee at just before 3am on the night of the raid.

His body, along with those of most of his crew, was washed up several days later and buried by the German forces in Bergen General Cemetery in Holland.

His parents received the news that he was missing after a few days, but it was not until two years later that they learned he had been one of the Dam Busters.

Mr Llywelyn Hall said: “In the portraits they all seem to have a sense of anticipation. They didn’t know what they were going into.”

The Canadian former front gunner Fred Sutherland is the only other survivor of the raids.