Operation Guzzle

What happened to the Dams Raid Lancasters: a definitive list

charlesfoster9 Comments

Lancaster ED825/G, one of the 23 Type 464 aircraft built for Operation Chastise. This was given the code AJ-T and was slated to be the spare. Because ED915/G AJ-Q was found to be faulty while preparing for take-off, Joe McCarthy and his crew eventually flew this aircraft on the raid, and attacked the Sorpe Dam. [Pic: IWM ATP 11384C]

Frank Pleszak has done a great service to other Dams Raid researchers by compiling a definitive list of the fate of the 23 aircraft built for Operation Chastise. These were all constructed over a period of two months in 1943 as a variation of the production run of Model BIII Lancasters taking place at the Avro headquarters factory at Chadderton, with final assembly at Woodford, both in Greater Manchester. The special model was given the name of Type 464 (Provisioning).

In total 23 Lancaster Type 464 conversions were produced. Nineteen of these flew on the Dams raid and eight were lost, leaving fifteen. None were ever fully returned to standard Lancaster BIII configuration (although some were part-modified) as it was too difficult or too costly to refit the bomb bay doors and mid-upper turret.

Over several days in August 1943 nine of the aircraft were used for trials with forward-rotating Upkeep mines at the Ashley Walk bombing range in the New Forest. During the trials ED765 was caught in the slipstream of others as it flew in close formation and crashed. The pilot (Flt Lt William Kellaway) and bomb aimer were seriously injured while the rest of the crew had more minor injuries.

Over the following six months some of the aircraft were used on occasional operations, as well as for training and other trials. On 10 December 1943, on an operation to drop supplies to members of the SOE, ED825 and ED886 were both lost. The crews were skippered by Wrt Off G Bull and Flg Off Gordon Weeden. Weeden and all his crew were killed, but Bull and four of his crew managed to bale out and were captured. The final wartime loss of a Dams Raid Lancaster occurred on 20 January 1944 when ED918 crashed on a night training flight near Snettisham in Norfolk. The pilot, Flt Lt Thomas O’Shaughnessy, was killed along with his bomb aimer.

Three were used after the war, in August and December 1946, in an mission which was given the name Operation Guzzle: the disposal of the remaining 37 live Upkeep mines in the Atlantic Ocean about 280 miles west of Glasgow. The eleven Type 464 Lancasters which survived the war were all finally scrapped in 1946-7.

Here is Frank Pleszak’s list:

You can read Frank’s full post on his blog here.

The strange tale of how Johnny became George

dambusters5 Comments
This is a rare picture of one of the specially modified Lancasters (given the cumbersome name of ‘Type 464 Provisioning’) used on the Dams Raid. It was taken at RAF Scampton after the war, sometime in 1947. At this stage it was carrying the code YF-A, signifying it was part of the ‘Scampton Station Flight.’
This was the last of the many codes this aircraft had used over the previous four years. For this is Lancaster ED906, which had been flown by David Maltby on the Dams Raid in May 1943, when it was coded AJ-J. After that raid, it wasn’t used again in operations until, in the autumn, it was converted back to standard Lancaster form, with a normal bomb-bay mechanism but no doors, and given the code KC-J. It was then flown by 617 Squadron’s Flt Lt BW Clayton on five operations between 11 November 1943 and 4 January 1944.
This is where things start getting complicated because it was then converted back to ‘Dambuster’ type, and given another new code, AJ-G, which of course was the code carried by Guy Gibson’s completely different Lancaster (ED932) on the Dams Raid.
At some point in 1944 it was flown to RAF Metheringham where it was used as a spare aircraft by members of the station staff. One of these was Sqn Ldr Johnny Meagher who was attached to 106 Squadron as an instructor in his six month break between operational tours. As one of his crew has recently recalled:
My second skipper S/Ldr. Johnny Meagher became an instructor pilot attached to 106 squadron Metheringham for his 6 months rest period after his first tour with 61 squadron. AJ-G was parked there as tour expired in its dambuster configuration. Johnny used it regularly for pilot training, familiarisation flights & as a general hack for shuttling the CO & others around & picking up off base crews etc.
ED906 was then taken to Coningsby and finally into storage at 46 Maintenance Unit in Lossiemouth.
After the war, ED906 was one of the three Dambuster aircraft brought out of storage and used in Operation Guzzle, the disposal of the ‘Upkeep’ revolving mines used in the Dams Raid. There were some 37 of these weapons left over, and each had to be individually dumped into the sea just beyond the edge of the Atlantic shelf some 280 miles west of Glasgow. This took place between August and December 1946. It may well have still carried the AJ-G code at this stage. After Guzzle it was then recoded YF-A.
It was ‘struck off charge’ (i.e. released for scrapping) on 29 July 1947.
[Some information in this article from Alex Bateman’s posts on Lancaster Archive.]
pic-lanc-ED906
This is a rare picture of one of the specially modified Lancasters (given the cumbersome name of ‘Type 464 Provisioning’) used on the Dams Raid. It was taken at RAF Scampton after the war, sometime in 1947. At this stage it was carrying the code YF-A, signifying it was part of the ‘Scampton Station Flight.’
This was the last of the many codes this aircraft had used over the previous four years. For this is Lancaster ED906, which had been flown by David Maltby on the Dams Raid in May 1943, when it was coded AJ-J. On the raid, it answered to the call sign ‘J for Johnny’. It wasn’t used again in operations until, in the autumn, it was converted back to standard Lancaster form, with a normal bomb-bay mechanism but no doors, and given the code KC-J. It was then flown by 617 Squadron’s Flt Lt BW Clayton on five operations between 11 November 1943 and 4 January 1944.
This is where things start getting complicated because it was then converted back to ‘Dambuster’ type, and given another new code, AJ-G, which of course was the code carried by Guy Gibson’s completely different Lancaster (ED932) on the Dams Raid, when its call sign was ‘G for George’.
At some point in 1944 it was flown to RAF Metheringham where it was used as a spare aircraft by members of the station staff. One of these was Sqn Ldr Johnny Meagher who was attached to 106 Squadron as an instructor in his six month break between operational tours. As one of his crew has recently recalled:
My second skipper S/Ldr. Johnny Meagher became an instructor pilot attached to 106 squadron Metheringham for his 6 months rest period after his first tour with 61 squadron. AJ-G was parked there as tour expired in its dambuster configuration. Johnny used it regularly for pilot training, familiarisation flights & as a general hack for shuttling the CO & others around & picking up off base crews etc.
ED906 was then taken to Coningsby and finally into storage at 46 Maintenance Unit in Lossiemouth.
After the war, ED906 was one of the three Dambuster aircraft brought out of storage and used in Operation Guzzle, the disposal of the ‘Upkeep’ revolving mines used in the Dams Raid. There were some 37 of these weapons left over, and each had to be individually dumped into the sea just beyond the edge of the Atlantic shelf some 280 miles west of Glasgow. This took place between August and December 1946. It may well have still carried the AJ-G code at this stage. After Guzzle it received its final code, YF-A.
It was ‘struck off charge’ (i.e. released for scrapping) on 29 July 1947.
[Some information in this article from Alex Bateman’s posts on Lancaster-Archive forum.]