Dambusters Blog

Well known Dambuster researcher Alex Bateman has had some thoughts about the recent Gibson furore. Here is part of his long post on the RAF Commands forum:

Many fighter pilots and bomber gunners invented and exagerrated combat claims, some intentional, some confused in the heat of battle. It is possible that the gunners exagerrated the episode, and that it didnt happen as reported. I’ll give an example.

When researching my first book, I included the story of a 617 Squadron rear gunner, who in a history of the Squadron written 20 years or so ago, had apparently downed two Me110s which were following the Lancaster, then a third before the mid upper fired upon a fourth which was later confirmed as having crashed. However, a contemporary report, compiled the day of the action noted that they were ‘…attacked by enemy fighters. Two were claimed shot down by the mid-upper gunner…’, with no mention of the rear gunner at all. You could put this down to post war bravado, or the passage of time. However, the Squadron Commander, Leonard Cheshire kept personal journals, and in that he wrote (the same day) that the rear gunner shot down two JU88s and a possible Fw190. Now, putting the post war recollection aside, we have two reports compiled within 24 hours, one by the IO and the other perhaps after a personal interview with the CO, but the results changing from the MuG getting two, to the RG getting two and possibly three, with the actual aircraft changing from Ju88s, to a pair of Ju88s and a single engined Fw190, to later on, four Me110s. A clear indication of how details are changed or badly compiled.

Gibson that night was flying a Canadian built Mosquito BXX, KB267, which was unarmed. As such, no return fire could have been seen by the Lancaster if the aircraft they fired upon was Gibson, but do remember the above. It would also explain how Gibson could have been attacked and downed, as he had no way of defending himself, and could have been mortally wounded in the first action. To me, the combat report is puzzling, as it seems the Bomb Aimer saw the ‘enemy’ aircraft in front and below. For the Mid Upper to have seen him at the same time, he would have had to be quite far ahead, because the wings would have otherwise obscured his view, but apparently the rear gunner then opened up almost at the same time. It would indicate the enemy aircraft was almost standing still to have appeared in front and then very quickly, far enough back for the rear gunner to draw a bead and open fire himself. Perhaps the aircraft in question was severly damaged, and the pilot otherwise occupied?

Paul61 makes a good point when he says that no fighter encounters were reported by our aircraft. That night, 227 Lancasters and 10 Mosquitos were flying, with 4 Lancs lost and the one Mosquito. NO enemy aircraft were lost, and as far as I am aware, no Luftwaffe pilot made a combat claim. Although the gunners of EE176 reported an attack by a JU88, was there any physical damage to the aircraft to substantiate this?

The recorded conversation where McCormack tells the story, was apparently made by his wife without his knowledge, during a reunion, recording his recollections and capturing the story at the same time. Considering my previous knowledge of Mccormack, I was doubtful. For one thing, would you go to such great lengths to name yourself as the killer, albeit accidental, of one of the RAFs greatest heroes? The Squadron ORB says nothing, the crew logs could have been added to later on. But the intelligence report for the night notes an aircraft shot down, with the incident recorded with co-ordinates which are pretty much over the centre of Steenbergen, where Gibson crashed. So we have an aircraft at relatively low level, shot down and seen to crash, but not claimed by any German crew.

It is known that Gibson was the only aircraft carrying red TIs that night, and when the aircraft crashed, it was reported as bursting on the ground in red. The excavation of the Mosquito a few years ago unearthed a burnt TI, confirming that at least one was still abaord when he went in, and seemingly being the aircraft that crashed, as witnessed ‘shot down’ by another Lancaster crew.

We can now, as then, only suppose what may or may not have happened, but if only one twin engined aircraft was lost, with details converging, its highly possible that IOs speculated as to the identity of the aircraft in question. “Was it a JU88, or do you think it might have been a Mosquito?”, they might ask, in an effort to try and establish what aircraft was downed. If any gunners admitted they saw or might actually have downed a Mosquito it would quickly help to establish that Gibson was not coming back, regardless who who did the shooting.

We can never be certain, but for me the new material is rather compelling. Not the taped interview or bragging, but the period documents recently unearthed. As for the sabotage theories and the lack of fuel, these can immediately be dismissed for a number of reasons.

Having read Alex’s explanation, I must admit that I am coming round to his view. I still can hardly believe that Gibson, with all his experience as a night fighter pilot before he went onto bombers, would put himself in such a stupid position, within range of a Lancaster’s guns. But we all make mistakes. It could be that Gibson made a fatal one that night, and paid the price.

The article featured on the cover of this month’s Britain at War magazine has stirred up a certain amount of controversy.

(Coverage here in the Sun, Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and on the BBC website.)

Provocatively entitled “Who Killed the Dambuster?” it claims to have unearthed definitive proof that on 19 September 1944 Guy Gibson’s Mosquito was shot down by “friendly fire” from a Lancaster of 61 Squadron, one of the aircraft in the strike force which he had just led on an attack on Rheydt and Mönchengladbach.
After the Dams Raid, Gibson had been removed from operational duties by senior RAF officers, worried about the propaganda consequences if he was shot down or taken prisoner. After 16 months away from the frontline, and with the invasion of Europe successfully negotiated, he managed to persuade the authorities to let him back on “Master Bomber” duties, supervising the marking of targets for other aircraft to attack. He was returning from the first of these operations, flying a unarmed Mosquito, when he crashed near Steenbergen in Holland. Both he and his navigator, Sqn Ldr James Warwick, were killed, their bodies so mangled that at first the remains found were assumed to be that of only one person.
A number of theories have been proposed as to the cause of the crash. Was the aircraft damaged by flak? Or shot down by a night fighter? Did the engines fail? Did a hung-up marker flare explode? Or was it an error, possibly caused by the pilot’s unfamiliarity with the controls of the Mosquito? In his 1995 biography, Richard Morris concluded that it was probably the latter, concluding that Gibson may not have known, or may have forgotten, about the necessity of switching fuel tanks, a duty usually undertaken by the navigator as the cock was positioned behind the pilot’s seat.
James Cutler, the author of the Britain at War article, claims that this last theory is wrong. He has come across a tape recording made in the 1980s by a 61 Squadron gunner, Bernard McCormack, who has since died. McCormack was the mid-upper gunner on Lancaster QR-V on the raid on Rheydt and his colleague, Sgt Maudersley, was in the rear turret. They had claimed that they had shot down a German JU88 at a debriefing after the raid, but the next day the intelligence officer had told them that it was in fact a Mosquito.
According to James Cutler, some of the material in the National Archives about the raid has been overlooked, but this may not be the case. Researcher Alan Wells has looked at the combat report compiled at McCormack’s and Maudersley’s debriefing, and also the one from another 61 Squadron aircraft QR-M, which opened fire on a JU88 some 20 minutes before. In a posting on the Stirling Forum, he concludes:

The combat report states that it was the A/B that saw the JU88 first, at a position given as “ahead and down”. It then moved to the “starboard down” position, where it was fired on by the M/U gunner, the R/G fired on it almost immediately after. On being fired on, the aircraft then moved to “dead astern” and attacked the Lanc, which went into a corkscrew, as it did this, the two A/G’s opened fire again, and the aircraft broke off the attack.
If this was Gibson, surely, after being fired on whilst in the starboard down position, why would he have been stupid enough to go dead astern and put himself in the firing line, instead of breaking away to safety, it does not make sense. 20 minutes earlier, another 61sqdn Lanc, was also attacked by a JU88, which started its attack from the starboard down position.

Alan Wells also points out that the gunners reported that the JU88 fired at them. Gibson’s Mosquito was not armed.

In the same forum, an actual Lancaster rear gunner veteran, Dennis Overs, suggested that if Gibson had really flown up behind a Lancaster it was tantamount to suicide:

It had been suggested that Gibson used to creep up on his crews in the stream to see if they were alert. My view at the time being that he would have been very aware that any such action on his part would have been potentially suicidal.
If the conditions on the night were quite dark, the gunner would have seen a faint outline of a twin engined a/c. creeping up on him. His reaction I believe was the correct one at that time. I certainly would have opened fire & called out corkscrew, seconds counted. The rear gunner had the advantage of his clear vision panel.
I suggest that the head on view of a Mosquito & JU 88 would have been difficult to confirm in the given time.
Even if conditions were clear, only a foolish mosquito pilot would have closed in on the rear of the a/c. in night fighter conditions.

Sgt McCormack’s tape recording, and the various documents, do make a plausible case for saying that Gibson was killed by “friendly fire,” something which is far too common in all sorts of wartime situations. However, all we can say at the moment is that the case is not yet proven.