Pride and sadness in remembering Dambusters 75 years on
Anniversary symbolised at Bomber memorial by 53 pairs of gloves for those who died, writes Joe Shute
The Bomber Command Memorial in Green Park is designed so the sky always appears open above the bronze sculpture of a seven-man aircrew which forms its centrepiece. At 8am yesterday, as a lone RAF bugler signalled a minute’s silence by sounding Last Post, shafts of weak sunlight picked out something else amid the memorial’s Portland stone columns: 53 pairs of pale kid leather flying gloves laid out on the floor.
Each pair represented one of the lost men of 617 Squadron who 75 years ago set off on what was widely considered the most audacious and dangerous raid in RAF history and who never made it home.
On the evening of May 16, 1943, 19 Lancaster bombers took off from RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire with 133 men on board. Their mission, code-named Operation Chastise, was to breach three of the largest dams in the Ruhr region of north-west Germany: the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe.
Their strategic importance meant the Germans swaddled them in torpedo nets and built steel and concrete reinforcements. To attack them was a desperate throw of the dice at a time when the war hung in the balance. But the pilots of 617 Squadron were equipped with a secret weapon – the bouncing bomb. The pilots flew in three waves, the first led by Wing Commander Guy Gibson; they breached the Möhne and Eder dams and badly damaged the Sorpe.
“The extraordinary achievement of what they did and the ingenuity of the bouncing bomb somewhat swamped the fact 53 young lads died on the raid,” says Steve Darlow, a Bomber Command historian and ambassador for the RAF Benevolent Fund that arranged yesterday’s event. “The raid was a huge morale boost for Britain.”
The heroism of the men of 617 Squadron was seized on by wartime propagandists and immortalised in the 1955 film The Dam Busters. Yet official recognition of their sacrifice has been difficult. The memorial to the 55,573 airmen of Bomber Command killed in the war was only opened by the Queen in 2012 after years of campaigning and a nationwide fundraising effort.
Squadron Leader George “Johnny” Johnson, 96, the sole surviving British Dambuster, continues to petition for the men of Bomber Command to be awarded a medal, rather than the bronze clasp they received in 2012. But according to Mr Darlow, recent years have witnessed a “swell of public recognition” for their bravery.
The service in London yesterday was meant to have coincided with a fly-past by a Lancaster through the Derwent Valley, where the bombs designed by Sir Barnes Wallis were tested before the raid. Sadly a thick bank of cloud over the Peak District forced its cancellation.
In a separate event last night at RAF Cosford in the West Midlands, 19 groups of seven people, representing the Lancaster bombers and their crews, marched around the airfield between 9.28pm and 6.30am to mark the duration of the Dambusters raid.
A minute’s silence was held eight times – at the moment each of the lost bombers had been downed.
Among those marching was Chris Henderson, 73, whose father Bob was a
‘The ingenuity of the bouncing bomb somewhat swamped the fact that 53 young lads died on the raid’
flight engineer in 617 Squadron and in the first wave of bombers, in an aircraft piloted by Dave Shannon.
Bob was 22 at the time. He survived the raid and the war and died in 1961.
“He never spoke about the Dambusters,” recalls Mr Henderson. “So many of them never did.”
Commemorations culminate tonight with a gala screening at the Royal Albert Hall of The Dam Busters, which will be screened simultaneously in 400 cinemas nationwide.
Among the guests will be Elisabeth Gaunt, daughter of Wallis. The 85-year-old, from Dorking, Surrey, still has the toy marbles that provided her father with the inspiration for the bouncing bomb. Despite the triumph of his invention, she says her father remained haunted by the raid.
“He thought of it with a great sadness,” she says. “Because of the men who didn’t return.”