Dambuster condemns vandals for war memorial paint attack
BRITAIN’S LAST surviving Dambuster has condemned the “mindless vandalism” which saw white paint thrown over the Bomber Command Memorial.
The RAF Benevolent Fund said it was the fourth time in six years that the statue in London’s Green Park had been sabotaged, with the paint still wet at “daybreak” yesterday.
As a Dambuster, Squadron Leader George “Johnny” Johnson conducted a night of raids on German dams in 1943, in an effort to disable Hitler’s industrial heartland.
Reacting to the damage, the 97-year-old Bomber Command veteran said: “What a disgrace, such mindless vandalism. How disrespectful to the nearly 58,000 people who gave their lives so that these thugs have the freedom to carry out such acts? I hope they are caught soon, and suitably punished.”
Bomber Command veteran Air Commodore Charles Clarke, who flew in Lancasters as a bomb aimer and was captured by the Nazis and imprisoned in Stalag Luft III after he had to parachute from his burning plane, called the act disgraceful and mindless, adding it “did not achieve anything”.
A statue of Second World War Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill in the capital’s New Bond Street was also targeted with white paint, and images on social media also showed damage to the Royal Marines Graspan Memorial on The Mall.
CCTV footage from nearby the Bomber Command Memorial – which commemorates more than 55,500 members of the Bomber Command who died in the Second World War - has been passed to police. Scotland Yard said officers are investigating reports of criminal damage to a number of statues in west London.