ON THE DAMBUSTERS’ TRAIL
Chris Leadbeater tours Lincolnshire in the footsteps of a band of audacious airmen
Abomb before dinner seems a lot to digest, but there it is anyway — tucked beside the ’20s swimming pool, which has been turned into a fountain. It looks, at first glance, like a heavy roller for a cricket pitch, idle between innings. But a sign in front reveals the truth — this is a prototype of the “bouncing bomb” cleverly devised by the British genius Barnes Wallis to target German dams in World War 2. It looks oddly at home on the lawn of the Petwood Hotel, the evening sun slanting across it. I have slipped out of the restaurant and across the terrace to inspect it — and as I do so, I hear a cascade of exuberant laughter from the lounge. Ghosts adrift on the early summer breeze? In a property built in 1905, which became a hotel in 1933, this seems almost within the realms of possibility.
The source of the mirth is a table of guests and a bottle of rosé — but the idea of guffaws echoing down the years is not so far-fetched. Petwood is still revered for having been the officers’ mess of the RAF’s 617 Squadron in 1944 and 1945. These dashing aviators called it “a splendid place remote from battle” — and they had earned their refuge.
Seventy-five years ago, on the night of May 16-17 1943, 133 of them flew 19 Lancaster bombers towards Germany as part of Operation Chastise — a daring attack on the Möhne, Edersee and Sorpe dams in the Ruhr valley, with Wallis’s new bombs as a speartip. Largely a success, the raid made a celebrity of the squadron’s commanding officer Guy Gibson, and landed his men the joyful nickname “Dambusters”.
It is a word, and a mission, which has stuck fast to the British consciousness.
ECHOES OF HISTORY
Petwood is a treasure trove of memories, the Squadron Bar preserved as a salute. In a photo in one corner, Gibson stands on the terrace, flashing the cocksure smile that characterised his existence. Above the fireplace, a frame of black and white shows the entire 617 Squadron at their home base, RAF Scampton.
There are further echoes in the area: the memorial to the squadron on Royal Square in Woodhall Spa, where 204 men are listed as dying on duty in World War 2 — the words “Australia”, “Canada” and “New Zealand” reemphasising the global nature of the conflict — and Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre in East Kirkby, which has one of the three airworthy Lancasters.
Then there is the soul of the Dambusters, RAF Scampton — still a functioning base, but one that lets civilians peek at infrastructure, which sings of 1943.
Upstairs in the RAF Scampton Heritage Centre, Gibson’s office has been restored to its appearance in 1943 — a dial-telephone on the desk, a pipe and ashtray, a pair of leather gloves, a chalkboard detailing the personnel for the May 16 mission.
There is context, too, in the next room, where a board names all 133 airmen who flew that night, with a poppy — 53 in all — next to each who did not return. And there is a frisson to entering the hangar behind, and knowing that it was here where the Lancasters were readied.
AT THE FOREFRONT OF FLIGHT
The hangar is currently given over to Bastion in the Air, an exhibition that examines Lincolnshire’s role in the air defence of the realm during World War 1, via artefacts as varied as a Sopwith Camel, and an officer’s cricket bat, taken to the Somme.
“Lincolnshire has been at the forefront of flight in this country for more than a century,” says David Harrigan of Aviation Heritage Lincolnshire — an RAF veteran who has been instrumental in the exhibition’s creation. “It’s been that way since the first German zeppelins came over, using the Humber as a navigational aid.”
Bastion in the Air extends to The Collection, a museum at the heart of Lincoln — a city that understands its heritage. Its cathedral marries 11th-century magnificence to 20th-century remembrance in its trio of military chapels — including the Airmen’s Chapel, with stained-glass tributes to the men who flew and died with Bomber Command. Its castle manages a similar leap in time, visibly Norman in shape, but mighty enough still for its Observatory Tower to be used as a lookout point in the ’40s.
From the tower, I can see the latest addition to the view. International Bomber Command Centre opened on the outskirts of the city in April, arranged around a spire of weathering steel which, at 31m, replicates the wingspan of a Lancaster. The curves of the same metal that radiate out around this elongated epicentre are inscribed with the identities of those who lost their lives in the war fighting for UK-based bomber squadrons.
EVERYONE WAS EQUAL
“That’s 57 861 people,” says the centre’s director Nicky Barr, “pretty much the capacity of Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium.” She pauses, then adds: “There are no honours or ranks on these walls. We decided that, at the exact time of sacrifice, everyone was equal.”
There is also equality within the centre, which balances honouring wartime heroism and acknowledging the damage. A video introduction to the main exhibition reminds the viewer that “almost a million people across Europe died as a result of bombing”. Screens show interviews with veterans — recreated by actors — which include the testimonies of Luftwaffe pilots who had to face the Lancasters. Items such as an Italian board game teaching children air-raid precautions underscore the terror on the ground.
But then you emerge to images of British airmen, in their 90s, and you are reminded that this era is slipping beyond living memory — George “Johnny” Johnson, the final surviving Dambuster, is now 96 — and of the human beings behind these legends.
● See lincsaviation.co.uk; rafscampton.co.uk; internationalbcc.co.uk.
There are no honours or ranks on these walls. We decided that, at the exact time of sacrifice, everyone was equal