Allsebrook 1943 bomb crater near Dortmund Ems canal revealed

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The Am Flueddert housing estate and a local map, with the site of the bomb crater highlighted. Pics: Chris Ward

When Flt Lt Ralph Allsebrook DSO DFC and his crew were posted to 617 Squadron immediately after the Dams Raid he was a pilot with an impressive operational record. Allsebrook had been a close friend of Henry Maudslay, who had met when they were both pilots in training at RAF Tern Hill in September 1940. Allsebrook was a little older, and had just completed a degree at Trinity College, Oxford. He then put off his plans to study law (his father was a judge) to join the RAF.

After qualifying as pilots, Allsebrook and Maudslay went their separate ways, to 49 Squadron and 44 Squadron respectively, but remained in close touch, so it must have been with a heavy heart that Allsebrook arrived at Scampton on 20 May 1943, the first new pilot and crew to join the squadron after the Dams Raid. It was just three days after Maudslay and his crew had been shot down on the way back from attacking the Eder Dam. By then, Allsebrook had clocked up 50 operations, mostly with the crew who transferred along with him, seen below in this photograph.

Pic: 49 Squadron Association. 

Allsebrook and his crew flew on the attacks on Italian targets in July and August 1943, before being selected to be one of the section of eight aircraft tasked to attack the Dortmund-Ems canal with a new light-case 12,000lb bomb on 15/16 September. This turned out to be a disaster, with five of the eight failing to return.

Chris Ward has now been in touch to say that he has identified the site where Allsebrook dropped his bomb, before his aircraft was hit by flak and crashed into the canal itself at the junction of the Mittelland and Dortmund-Ems canals in the Wet Triangle at Bergeshoevede. He can also say for certain that the bomb exploded.

The bomb crater is about six kilometres away from the crash site, at what is now a housing estate called Am Flueddert. It was within one hundred metres of concrete dispersals on the nearby Hopsten fighter aerodrome and about 800 metres from the western bank of the Mittelland Canal. At the time, the area was a wasteland covered in heather. Local people described a crater twenty metres across and very deep, which soon filled with water and was used as a swimming hole, until it was fenced off with barbed wire as a safety measure. It was eventually filled in, and gradually built on from the 1950s onwards, so that no trace now remains.

Chris Ward suspects that Allsebrook’s Lancaster was already damaged, and that he jettisoned the already fused bomb in an attempt to maintain what little height he had. The detonation would almost certainly have severely rocked the aircraft, and may have added to the damage that caused it to crash a few seconds later. This confirms that the only bomb recovered intact was that dropped “safe” by Knight after he clipped trees on the way to the target.

A few weeks before this fateful operation, in August 1943 when Henry Maudslay’s loss was finally confirmed, Allsebrook had written a moving letter of consolation to Maudslay’s mother, expressing sentiments that were widely held amongst his RAF comrades and confirming that he was indeed a very mature young man:

“I know that nothing can be said that is of any use, but perhaps I may tell you that often I feel – and I think Henry felt – a fear of death only so far as it will bring such sadness and despair to one’s parents. Against it we can do nothing, but one fears for those you love more than for oneself.
You can perhaps help yourself a little for the time in the immediate empty future by knowing how he or I or anyone hopes and prays that you will find strength to bear the sorrow.”
Letter from Ralph Allsebrook to Gwen Maudslay, 21 August 1943.
[Robert Owen, Henry Maudslay: Dam Buster, Fighting High, 2014 , pp.296-7.]

The crew of Lancaster EE130 on the night of the Dortmund-Ems operation was made up of the six men who had flown with Allsebrook in 49 Squadron and who had transferred to 617 Squadron along with him, plus an extra gunner. The crew list reads Flt Lt RAP Allsebrook DSO DFC (pilot), Flt Sgt P Moore (flight engineer), Plt Off NA Botting (navigator), Flg Off JM Grant DFC (wireless operator), Flt Sgt RBS Lulham (bomb aimer), Sgt IG Jones (mid-upper gunner), Flt Sgt S Hitchen (rear gunner) plus Flt Sgt WE Walker (extra air gunner).

[Thanks to Chris Ward.]

Allsebrook crew page on 49 Squadron Association website.

Mick Martin speaking at RI 1981 Christmas Lecture

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Mick Martin speaking about the Dams Raid at the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in 1981. 

The Christmas Lectures at London’s Royal Institution have been a seasonal staple in the BBC TV schedule for years – perhaps more popular with adults than children. This enchantingly low tech example comes from the 1981 series, given by Professor R V Jones of the University of Aberdeen. At the beginning of the war, Jones had moved from his job at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough to the Air Ministry where he became Assistant Director of Intelligence (Science).

Jones’s series of lectures were on the subject of navigation and entitled “From Magna Carta to Microchip”. The fifth lecture, which can be seen here in full, discussed navigation techniques during the second world war. One of the guest demonstrators during the lecture was none other than the recently retired Air Marshal Sir Harold Martin, who was of course much better known to the public as “Mick” Martin, the pilot of AJ-P on the Dams Raid.

It is good to see Mick looking hale and hearty. Professor Jones’s lecturing technique may not be of the highest order, but the whole reminds us that we don’t always need more modern presentational gimmicks to get a message across.

[Thanks to Norman Wells and PPRuNe for the tip.]

Your Christmas film: The Dam Busters on Channel 4 today

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Michael Anderson’s 1955 film The Dam Busters is being shown again on Channel 4 today at 1.35pm UK time. It now seems to be a regular feature on both the main channel and Film Four.

Experience shows that this will result in a number of first time visitors reading this blog, so if this is you, welcome aboard. This is the one-stop shop for all Dambuster-related news and information, coming to you regularly for twelve years. I try to publish several items every month so please check back regularly. You can ensure you see every post by clicking the “Follow blog by email” button in the right hand column.

If you are searching today for information on when Peter Jackson’s new version of the 1955 film will appear, the news is simply that there is no news. Jackson bought the rights to remake the film back in 2006. At various times he has announced that a director has been appointed, that a script has been commissioned and that a number of life size model Lancasters have been built. However, in the fourteen years since the remake was announced he has been busy making three Hobbit films and a number of other projects and the Dambusters remake no longer appears in his IMDB listing. Make of that what you will.

If you want to see a list of the 133 men who took part in the Dams Raid, you can find it here. My recent book The Complete Dambusters, published by History Press in 2018, contains a full biography and a photograph of each man and can be ordered direct from the publishers, the usual online booksellers or your local bookshop.

 

Christmas during a crisis

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Christmas 1942: A group of young children at Fen Ditton Junior School in Cambridgeshire design and make their own seasonal decorations. [Pic: IWM 23619]

Safe to say, this has been a year like no other in modern memory. However, there are brighter prospects ahead so, whatever happens during the next twelve months, many greetings from the Dambusters Blog in the hope that all our readers everywhere have a safe and happy future.

 

New picture of Canadian pilot Gordon Price and crew

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Canadian pilot Gordon Price and five of his crew, photographed in 617 Squadron sometime in early 1945. Left to right: Flg Off Joseph Merchant (bomb aimer), Wrt Off G E Hartley (flight engineer), Sgt D V Sargison (rear gunner), Flt Lt Gordon Price (pilot), Sgt Charles Avey (mid-upper gunner), Sgt K Pocock (wireless operator). Absent: Flt Sgt H Kohl (navigator).
[Pic: Merchant family]

A second wartime picture of the late Charles Avey has emerged, 24 hours after the first. One of his crewmates was bomb aimer Joe Merchant, whose son Peter has kindly sent me a rarely seen photograph of the crew skippered by the Canadian pilot, Flt Lt Gordon Price. The crew came straight to 617 Squadron from Lancaster Finishing School on 9 December 1944, and flew on some eleven operations before the end of the war, including the bombing of the Lutzow, which they hit with the decisive Tallboy.

Addendum, 16 December 2020: Sgt Gordon Richard Price was born in 1922 and joined the RCAF in Montreal in April 1941. He flew a first tour of operations with 106 Squadron at RAF Syerston between November 1942 and April 1943 and was then posted to 1661 Conversion Unit as an instructor. He received the DFM in May 1943, and was then commissioned. He was posted to 617 Squadron in December 1944 to start a second tour of operations.
The aircraft in the picture is PD112 – YZ-S. This was the first Lancaster to drop a Grand Slam, which it did on 14 March 1945 at the Bielefeld Viaduct. On this occasion it was piloted by Sqn Ldr Charles (“Jock”) Calder.
[Hat tips to Clive Smith and Robert Owen for this information.]

Snow drops a clanger in hangar

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Dan Snow, on the wrong spot. 

Last week’s three-part documentary series, broadcast on Channel 5, had a number of errors. A major one is discussed here.

This concerns the near catastrophe caused when the Upkeep mine was dropped accidentally onto the ground from Mick Martin’s aircraft AJ-P soon after it had been loaded by the squadron’s armourers. This did not take place inside a hangar, as so energetically described by Dan Snow in the programme, but several hundred yards away in the open air on each aircraft’s concrete hardstanding. Wartime bombing-up, as the process was called, never took place in the confined space of a hangar. It was simply too dangerous.

It is true that Martin and some of his crew, including bomb aimer Bob Hay, were inside AJ-P checking that things had been loaded correctly when the incident occurred. What followed was memorably described by Paul Brickhill in his 1951 book:

“… a fault developed in the bomb release circuit, the release snapped back and there was a crunch as the giant black thing fell and crashed through the concrete hardstanding, embedding itself 4 inches into the earth below. …
‘Release wiring must be faulty,’ Hay said professionally, and then it dawned on him and he said in a shocked voice, ‘it might have fused itself.’ He ran, yelling madly out of the nose, ‘Get out of here. She’ll go off in less than a minute.’ Bodies came tumbling out of the escape hatches, saw the tails of the armourers vanishing into the distance and set off after them. Martin jumped into the flight van near by and, with a grinding of gears, roared off to get Doc Watson. He had his foot hard down on the accelerator and swears that a terrified armourer passed him on a push-bike. He ran into Watson’s office and panted out the news and Watson said philosophically, ‘Well, if she was going off she’d have gone off by this.’ ”
Paul Brickhill, The Dam Busters, Evans 1951, pp71-72

It’s not mentioned by Brickhill, but it seems that WAAF officer Fay Gillon was also on board AJ-P at the time of the accident. She was a friend of Martin and his crew, and was being given a tour.

Plt Off Henry (“Doc”) Watson MBE was the squadron’s Armaments Officer.

For the record, two other smaller errors:
Episode 2: Only two models of the targets were shown to the crews at the briefing (and earlier to Gibson). These were of the Möhne and Sorpe Dams. The Eder Dam model wasn’t completed until after the raid.
Episode 3: Martin was not the first to touch down at Scampton after dropping his mine. He arrived at 0319. Maltby arrived eight minutes earlier, at 0311.

 

Charles Avey: a wartime picture

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Pic: Avey family

Wartime 617 Squadron member Flt Sgt Charles Avey died in July this year, as I reported at the time.

I was unable to source a wartime picture of him, but am happy to say that I can now publish one, courtesy of his niece Lisa Ingham.

Avey joined 617 Squadron in December 1944 as the mid-upper gunner in a crew skippered by the Canadian pilot Flt Lt G R Price. He flew on some eleven operations in Price’s crew before the end of the war.

I’m sorry to say that there are only a handful of 617 Squadron wartime veterans still with us. We salute them one and all.

Why buy a fake?

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This is very odd.

Back in 2015 I wrote about an item which was advertised for sale at a respectable Stourbridge auction house. This was said to be a telegram sent in 1944 to 617 Squadron by Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris about the death on operations of Guy Gibson and his navigator Sqn Ldr James Warwick. Even without seeing the item, I listed five separate reasons why I considered that the telegram was a worthless modern fake and I’m glad to say that the auctioneers agreed and removed it from sale.

But now, a photograph of the same item has emerged for sale on eBay. Yours for the princely sum of £3.50. (Don’t all rush at once.)

It’s being sold by someone with the catchy vendor name of 4256970mnr, who seems to specialise in making photographs of other photographs, chiefly of Dams Raid artefacts. The most expensive item he has for sale is going for £9, so it’s not a highly lucrative business.

But what is most puzzling is Mr Mnr’s description of the Harris “telegram”:

“The original telegram is doubted to be genuine – but is of interest.” There’s no doubt about it. It’s a fake, pure and simple. I wouldn’t spend even £3.50 on it.

One-and-a-half million hits today

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Around about 1.20 this afternoon this blog clicked up its one and a half millionth visitor, so a hearty welcome to whoever it was!

The blog was set up in May 2008, and the first half million views took place over the next 62 months, with the number being reached in June 2013. The millionth visitor arrived in May 2017, 46 months later. And today’s target was hit 42 months after this. You could therefore say that the pace is hotting up.

You might also be interested to know that there have been 658 posts over the 150 months that the blog has been operating, which works out at 4.38 posts per month. And, as you can see from the screen shot at the top of the page, there have been 2870 comments, most of them being complimentary and/or helpful. So keep them coming, and here’s to the next half-million hits!

The Dambusters Derry Boy

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Sgt Richard Bolitho on left, with two other air gunners, Sgt Adams (centre) and Sgt Julian Bracegirdle (right). Photograph probably taken while at Air Gunnery School, summer of 1942. [Pic: Bate family]

Richard Bolitho was born on 19 January 1920 in 38 Clarendon Street, Derry/Londonderry in what is now Northern Ireland. His birth predates the partition of Ireland in 1921 into Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State. Bolitho was the only man to take part in the Dams Raid to be born on the island of Ireland.

It is thought that the property was a maternity home at the time, but it is now offices and can be seen on a local estate agent’s website. It is occupied by a counselling service.

Clarendon Street is described by the agent as “the city’s best known ‘professional’ street – home to many professional businesses of long standing. It would be considered as a ‘prestigious’ address within the city.

Historically, it has been an area where wealthy merchants and professionals chose to live. Today, the street is dominated by accountancy, legal and medically related practices, but a number of properties have recently reverted to a residential function, restoring the striking Georgian facades to their former glory.”

Richard’s father William Bolitho was a commercial traveller in the seed business, originally from Cornwall. He had stayed on in Ireland after meeting and marrying a local woman, Jane Cuthbertson, the daughter of a land steward. They were married in Derry’s Church of Ireland cathedral on 14 November 1916, when William was 37 and Jane was 40. Richard was an only child.

In 1927 the family moved to England, first to Roose in Cumberland, where Richard attended the local school. The family then bought a hotel in Kimberley, Nottinghamshire. Richard moved in with his aunt Emily, who owned a fruit and vegetable shop in the town. He was educated at the local Church Hill School and then won a scholarship to the nearby Heanor Secondary School (later Heanor Grammar School) in 1931. He joined the RAF in 1940, but wasn’t selected for aircrew training until early in 1942

After qualifying as an air gunner, he was posted to an operational training unit, where he crewed up with Max Stephenson, Floyd Wile, Don Hopkinson and Albert Garshowitz. The five were then selected for heavy bomber training and John Kinnear and Frank Garbas were added to the crew.

Their first posting to 9 Squadron was cut short when Stephenson was killed while flying with another crew. The remaining six were sent on to 57 Squadron at Scampton, and assigned to Bill Astell. They first flew together on 13 February 1942, on an operation to Lorient. Seven further operations followed until some six weeks later when they were all posted to the new 617 Squadron, based at the same station.

After several more weeks of training Bolitho spent his last leave before the Dams Raid in early May 1943 at his home in Kimberley. He brought two of his Canadian colleagues, Floyd Wile and Albert Garshowitz, and the Scot John Kinnear along as his guests.

All would die together near Marbeck in Germany just a few days later, in the early hours of Monday 17 May 1943, and they are buried together in Reichswald Forest War Cemetery, having been reinterred after the war from their original graves in Borken.

In 1946, three years after his death, his parents returned to Northern Ireland where they lived in the coastal resort of Portrush, and spent the rest of their lives there. The fact that they retired to Portrush has led a number of sources to claim that Richard was born in Portrush. However, this is not the case – he was a Derry Boy.

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Richard Bolitho remembered on the war memorial from Heanor Grammar School, now relocated to Marpool Church, Nottinghamshire. [Pic: Heanor & District History Local History Society.]

More about Bolitho online:
Commonwealth War Grave Commission entry
Kimberley War Memorial
Bolitho family history website
Aircrew Remembered webpage about Astell crew

Further information about Richard Bolitho and the other 132 men who flew on the Dams Raid can be found in my book The Complete Dambusters, published by History Press in 2018.