Dambusters Blog

13 thoughts on “The Dams Raid: 80th anniversary”

1. Tim Layton May 16, 2023 / 5:11 pm

   Thanks as ever for doing all this Charles. I read “Enemy Coast Ahead” finally when the last Dambuster sadly died recently, inspiring and fascinating. It was difficult to read all the names Gibson listed as men he didn’t want to forget. So many, like in your post.

   I am anchored in Kotor Bay in Montenegro, flying the RAF ensign today and tomorrow. My modest main mast is 57′ high, about the same height as the Lancasters had to release their bouncing bombs at 232 mph. Extraordinary skill and courage. Lest we forget.

   Reply
2. Caroline Howell May 16, 2023 / 6:37 pm

   Charles, thank you SO much for this article and the comprehensive list of crew members.
   I’m awaiting delivery of your book to add to my collection of AJ-T ‘bits & pieces’ and my too many BOB books.
   I had hoped the BBMF would veer the Lancaster slightly to the east, near its first stop tonight, but it was not to be.
   I’m lucky to have had a look round inside our Lancaster and have stood underneath the open bomb bay doors. It gives one just a tiny glimpse into what it might have been like to climb into those planes night after night.

   Reply
3. John Davies May 16, 2023 / 7:25 pm

   I shall be stepping on to the Möhne Dam tonight
   To remember those that we’re lost.

   Reply
4. rgwbaker@aol.com May 17, 2023 / 6:32 am

   Thanks for the information, they were all very brave men

   Sent from my iPhone

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5. gricegrice May 17, 2023 / 7:44 am

   Hello Charles,

   I wonder if you could help me please?

   I have spent all last night until 2am looking for Willie Hatton’s information without knowing his surname. I knew of his story since I was 5 years old but only last night was I nudged into researching him. My grandmother was best friends with his sister Rene (who I only knew as Hopkins.) She subsequently became a regular part of my life. I wonder if you know if she is still a live and if so, how I might contact her? I know she moved from Hull to the south coast – then we lost touch.

   Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing from you.

   Debbie

   Reply
   • charlesfoster May 17, 2023 / 8:52 am

     Debbie — I will try to contact Rene and pass on your information. Charles

     Reply
     • gricegrice May 17, 2023 / 6:03 pm

       That is perfect – thank you Charles. (If it helps her remember me, my maiden name is Grice, I’m Bill Docwra’s granddaughter)
6. John Smith May 26, 2023 / 7:43 am

   Thanks very much for posting this moor rant and exhaustive list. I’m sure everyone is aware but the podcast “we have ways” with James Holland and Al Murray has just posted a week of 80th anniversary dams raid special editions.

   Reply
7. John Smith May 26, 2023 / 7:44 am

   For “moor rant” read “important.” Apologies

   Reply
8. Hazel Cameron June 21, 2023 / 12:20 pm

   Hi, I am typing up my Uncle’s memoir (Duncan Cameron) and he flew the Richard Todd plane in the Dambuster film. There is a photograph of him leaning out the plane in the documentary made about the film but he doesn’t really get mentioned elsewhere. Once I have finished the memoir, I can send you any comments he makes about his involvement with the film if you are interested?

   Reply
   • charlesfoster June 21, 2023 / 1:20 pm

     I would certainly be interested! I will write to you privately and send you the the email address you can send them to. CF

     Reply
9. David Kingham July 5, 2023 / 10:36 am

   Dear all,

   Please note my new email address with effect from Monday 10th July 2023 is:-

   davidkingham@cymbol.uk

   Any problems please message or call me on 07802 877 935

   Many thanks

   David Kingham

   Reply
10. James Cutler July 31, 2023 / 5:49 pm

    Re Guy Gibson VC ‘read more’
    Dear Charles,
    I hope you are recovering well. As a follower of your excellent and normally accurate blog, I have to point out, as politely as I am able, that the evidence that Guy Gibson was mistakenly shot down by Lancaster QR-V from 61 Squadron, is not based on the veracity or not of the secretly recorded tape of the former Lancaster mid-upper gunner. Far from being anecdotal or speculative, the evidence is in fact well documented and conclusively corroborated in the RAF’s records. The Bombing Campaign of World War Two was comprehensively documented with every significant event witnessed by the hundreds of aircrews noted down during a raid and reported shortly after landing. These were the records of eye witnesses written down at the very time the events unfolded.

    After de-briefing, the data from different Squadrons was amalgamated in “Z” reports which included : “Aircraft Seen Shot Down” with the geographical co-ordinates and time as noted down by the crew as they watched it happen.
    Three separate Lancaster crews from three different squadrons recorded independently what can only have been the shooting down of Guy Gibson’s Mosquito at the time that it happened. Their reports were filed within hours of landing by their different squadrons’ intelligence officers. Their records of the encounter were, of course, kept secret for decades after the war but are now in the National Archives at Kew and even available online.

    First, there is the 61 Sqn Combat Report which is easily overlooked as 61 squadron’s ORB misleadingly states that “no fighters were encountered” on that night. This combat report was tucked away in the ORB’s appendices. It states that on September 19th the mid upper and rear gunners on Lancaster QR-V from 61 Sqn fired 600 rounds and probably destroyed a Ju 88. The combat report gives the time as 22.25 GMT and location as just at the Dutch shore over what is now the Kwade Hoek National Park. That is just 4 minutes 40 seconds flying time at Mosquito cruising speed from Steenbergen where Gibson crashed. At roughly the same time, a Lancaster from 106 Squadron (ironically the Squadron that Gibson led before 617) reported, under “Aircraft Seen Shot Down”, seeing an aircraft beside them at 9000 feet “falling in flames” and the location was given as 51 48N 04 05E. So the location was just one and a half minutes flying time away from QR-V’s Combat report’s co-ordinates. On its own that would be significant corroboration but there is another report that could well be described as the clincher. A Lancaster crew from 97 Squadron reported seeing an aircraft “shot down” at 22.19 at 11000 feet at and “as it burst on the ground a red light resembling a TI (Target Indicator) was seen to burn”. The coordinates given, 51 35N 04 20E, are the coordinates for STEENBERGEN! It is a known fact that Gibson’s Mosquito was carrying RED TARGET INDICATORS which hung up and had not been dropped at the target. This was, without a doubt, Gibson’s Mosquito “Seen Shot Down” and burning on the ground.

    The timings and locations of the two independent reports from Lancaster crews and the combat report of QR-V’s crew may not be exactly the same but they are absolutely within typical margins of error for Z report sightings of the shooting down of known lost aircraft where the exact crash site has been identified. Other planes returning on that same raid on September 19th 1944 were also “seen shot down” by other crews and their timings and location fixes vary by the same small differences as do the three reports above, but in each case can only refer to the same lost Lancaster, whose crash site is known. For the four Lancasters shot down on the Monchengladbach raid on 19th September 1944, the locations and timings of the RAF’s Aircraft Seen Shot Down” reports can be matched up with Luftwaffe combat reports to give an accepted, accurate picture of the Lanc’s fates. But, in the case of the fifth plane “Seen Shot Down” on that night, the reports of the two Lancaster crews can only be matched up with a combat report – not from the Luftwaffe’s Nachtjagder archives – but from the crew of 61Squadron’s QR-V.

    It is more than a little perplexing that this evidence which was obviously kept secret at the time but has been in the National Archives for decades, is persistently ignored or, even worse, questioned with spurious caveats.
    A typical example is on this blog, where Alan Wells is quoted as pointing out that another 61 Sqn Lanc reports encountering a Ju88 20 minutes before QR-V’s combat report. but the location for that is Ittervoort, 115 miles away from QR-V’s combat location and just 30 miles from the target area where it is known that Nightfighters of IV./NJG1 were successfully operating. If Mr Wells is suggesting that it actually was a Ju 88 that QR-V spotted and engaged, then he is on shaky ground. The world’s foremost Luftwaffe Night-fighter expert, Dr Theo Boiten, confirms that all the Luftwaffe records for that night and that area exist and they show that no German night fighter was lost on that raid and there is no record of any Ju88 even damaged nor any record of a German plane reporting any kind of encounter with any British aircraft in that location at that time on that date. If a Ju 88 had been struck by gunfire on that night in that area it would have been recorded in an Abschussmeldung (Luftwaffe Combat report). Theo Boiten has published many volumes of these collected Luftwaffe combat reports. He also states that the actual crash site of every single Luftwaffe plane shot down over Holland in WWII is known. So the answer from the Luftwaffe’s meticulously recorded documentation is clear. No German plane fell in that area on that date at that time.

    Another objection concerns the fact that QR-V’s crew’s combat report says that the “Ju 88” fired at them, but Gibson’s Mosquito was unarmed. In 1943, as noted by Bomber Command’s foremost historian, Martin Middlebrook, an Order went out to all Air Gunners saying that they should never fire at another aircraft unless it fired at them first (to avoid friendly fire incidents). So QR-V’s gunners would have been bound to have ticked that box to avoid any recrimination. “Four engines – good, two engines – bad” and “shoot first and ask questions afterwards” were the watchwords of many air gunners as chillingly described in Lancaster gunner John Wainwright’s book “Tail End Charlie” and the works of Jack Currie and Middlebrook. Often, where Combat Reports state the “fighter fired first”, it is obvious from the distances given for the points at which the opposing planes’ opened fire that it had not.
    There is more indirect corroboration that the “Ju88” was in fact a Mosquito in the Combat Report’s statement that the “Ju88” had its Navigation Lights on. It was common and well documented practice for RAF crews to turn their Navigation Lights when they reached the North Sea to avoid collisions, or even to flash their lights to show another crew that they were friend not foe rather than use their IFF radar which could be detected by the enemy.
    As for the entirely speculative fuel tank theory, it is hard to believe that anyone can still posit it let alone believe in it. While Warwick may have only had experience on Lancasters, Gibson was experienced on a vast range of other aircraft. Since gaining his “Wings” in 1937 he had flown single engine Hawker Hinds, 37 missions in twin engine Hampdens, 99 sorties in twin engine Beaufighters, further sorties in twin engine Manchesters, Blenheims and Lockheed Lightnings and piloted Mosquitoes on at least two long trips. One of his Mosquito trips was to observe a raid on Creil in France involving a flight of 608 miles there and back, another was to Scatsca in the Shetland Islands, a distance of 499 miles.
    When I wrote the article for Britain At War magazine, to my amazement, I discovered that none of the proponents of this theory had ever bothered to check the simple crucial facts – how much fuel was in the relative tanks? How far would the plane be expected to fly before the switch had to be made?
    In a Mosquito, the pilot’s instructions were to take off on the Inner/Main Tanks then use up the fuel in the Outer Tanks first before switching the fuel lines back over to the main tanks.
    Gibson had flown at least two long trips on Mosquitoes, so he would have had to have switched between the tanks on both of these flights. He would have had to have known about the procedure. In fact, the procedure would have been second nature to him. As mentioned above, he flew 99 operations on Beaufighters which had exactly the same system as a Mosquito of Outer wing tanks and Inner/Main tanks and the need to switch between the two sets in exactly the same sequence. On a Beaufighter, the Outer tanks held 174 gallons of fuel and the Inner/Main tanks 376 gallons. On a Mosquito the outer tanks held 116 gallons and the inner tanks held 336 gallons. But, even if on the night of the 19th September 1944, Guy Gibson had somehow forgotten about the procedure that he was so familiar with on Beaufighters, the theory doesn’t stand up to sustained scrutiny. The Mosquito flying at 230 mph did around 2.5 mpg to 2.75 mpg. Simple arithmetic tells us that the 116 gallons of fuel in the Outer tanks would give it a max range of around 290 miles. The target, Monchengladbach was some 320 aeronautical miles from Lincolnshire. Even a primary school child could see that if Gibson had been using the outer tanks and failed to switch when they ran out, he would have crashed before he even reached the target, not on the way back at Steenbergen.
    Conversely, if he had simply taken off on his Inner/Main tanks and used only them to fly to the target he would have had a range of 837 miles. He had flown only 326 miles to Monchengaldbach, circled the target, then flown 95 miles homeward to Steenbergen. A total of 421 miles plus some miles flying around the target area. Clearly and indisputably, if he had been flying on the main tanks he would not have run out of fuel at any point in the mission.
    Despite these readily available data and calculations, expert after expert has explained the crash with this frankly bogus theory. There have even been desperate attempts to ignore the theory’s mathematical impossibility by suggesting that maybe the tanks weren’t properly full at take-off – on a Master Bomber/Target Marker’s plane for a raid on Germany? Really? That would be almost taking us back to the ‘sabotage by ground crew’ theory.

    If KB 267’s self-sealing tanks had been damaged by flak or night-fighter combat over the target – for which, of course, there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever but no doubt somebody will cling to the idea – the most operationally experienced pilot in the RAF would surely have noticed the fuel gauges dropping early on in the flight home (on a Mosquito a red light would have been flashing on the instrument panel to indicate low fuel levels) and could have landed in Allied held territory (the bulge towards Arnhem) which he had flown over on his way to the Dutch coast and home.
    The inconsistent evidence from Dutch eyewitnesses was not contemporaneous, but was actually recorded 33 years later in 1977 by Andy Saunders, a respected Aviation Historian. One witness, S.C. Bastinanse, states that, before crashing, the plane was heading West (i.e. in the direction of allied occupied territory) “at a height of 3000 to 5000 feet” (i.e. up to almost a mile high) and, as would be expected from a plane crashing from that height, he says that an engine part was buried, “at a depth of 5 meters” in the soil. Another witness JA van Oers also describes how the engines, “went deeply into the solid clay.” I can testify from visiting the site that the van Riet’s farm has the thickest clay soil I have ever come across (and I live in South Lincolnshire). But rather than rely on civilian witnesses, the Royal Netherlands Airforce’s own Aircraft Recovery Unit who excavated the site in 1985 led by the late great Gerit Zwannenberg, to whom I spoke some years ago, found engine parts at 3 metres deep in the very heavy clay soil. He was adamant that they had found no evidence of fuel starvation or fuel cock mismanagement whatsoever.

    It was a very sad and potentially demoralising fact that “Friendly Fire” was a common but frequently covered up occurrence in WWII air warfare. As Gibson points out in his autobiography Enemy Coast Ahead, which details several incidents that he was involved in, Friendly Fire was more of an everyday occupational hazard than any kind of unusual event, “This sort of thing happens in all forms of aerial warfare.” Gibson’s loss was not even the only Friendly Fire incident on that smallish raid to Monchengladbach on 19th September 1944! A Lancaster from 44 Squadron, on the way home, reported that another Lancaster approached them from about 300 yards above, then “moved to the starboard beam and opened fire from the mid upper turret- about a three second burst.” The 44 Sqn Lancaster – the potential victim – corkscrewed, at which point the report concludes, with tangible relief, “the attacking Lanc disappeared.” (So much for the Order that air gunners must only open fire after they had been fired upon themselves).

    The Mosquito was a brilliant plane but notoriously vulnerable to Friendly Fire. The USAAF, who used Mosquitoes, had to paint their tailplanes red to avoid their own gunners shooting them down. There is even gun camera footage on You Tube of a USAAF plane shooting down a misidentified Mosquito. The striking similarities between a Mosquito and a Ju88 are glaringly obvious.

    There is further evidence in the records that the RAF actually concocted a false narrative about the events that led to Guy Gibson’s death in an attempt to hide the embarrassing truth, much as they did in the case of the citations for Flight Sergeant John Bettany’s CGM and Flight Sergeant Arthur Aaron’s VC both of whom were lost to ‘Friendly Fire’. During an existential conflict like WWII, such cover ups could be justified but, now, nearly 80 year later, I do not believe it pays proper tribute to heroes like Gibson and all the men of Bomber Command who fought against a regime that was founded on and sustained by lies to wilfully disregard evidence or obfuscate the truth about war, however painful or embarrassing it might be. Finally, I don’t want to sound pompous – or even worse a snowflake! – but my background was in investigative documentaries where factual accuracy was paramount (and a legal necessity) and I find it bordering on the defamatory to suggest that there might be question marks over the veracity of my presentation of the extensive documented evidence for Friendly Fire as the cause of Guy Gibson’s death or that I have relied on some dubious recollection from an old air gunner.

    Reply

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