Dambusters Blog

These first hand accounts of the Dams Raid were posted on an Australian aviation art forum in 2008 by someone called Stephen Diver. They come from letters sent to the Diver family by David Shannon (pilot AJ-L) and Tony Burcher (rear gunner in AJ-M, piloted by John Hopgood). You will have to scroll down some way to read them all (and make sense of some pretty terrible typing and spelling!) but they make interesting reading.
Perhaps the most fascinating is Tony Burcher’s account of what his pilot John Hopgood said as he realised that his aircraft was badly damaged:

Then John said

“Right well what do you think?” Should we go on? I intend to go on because we have only got a few minutes left. We’ve come this far.

“There’s no good taking this thing back with us. The aircraft is completely manageable. I can handle it ok. Any objections?”

I remember hearing Charlie [Brennan] (who as F/E would have been standing right beside John at this time) interrupt him by saying

“Well what about your face? Its bleeding like..”

and John interrupting him mid word by saying

“just hold a handkerchief over it”.

So I imagine for the remainder of the raids time Charlie would have been standing next to John in an attempt to try and stem the bleeding and keep his eye sight clear.

I have no idea as to the nature of the wound and can only assume it to have been a head wound of some nature.

Based on Charlies reactions,and he was normally a calm chap, I can only assume Johns wounds to have been severe in nature. I think anyone else would have probably turned around at that point and headed for home but not John.

That was the type of man he was.

Sobering stuff.

[Hat tip Night Warrior on Lancaster Archive Forum]