BBMF to honour AVRO at Chadderton on Sunday

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This coming Sunday, 16 May, marks the 67th anniversary of the Dams Raid. I will be posting more material about this later this week but thought people in the North West might like to know about the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight’s plans for the day.
The BBMF Lancaster, ‘Phantom of the Ruhr’, has been out of action for the last few days with a faulty fuel cock. Luckily, a replacement has been found (which must have been quite a task for an aircraft in its seventh decade!) and it is undergoing an airtest today.
If all is well, the Lancaster will be marking the centenary of the foundation of the AV Roe company by flying over the site of the factory where it was designed and where more than 7,000 were built during the war – Chadderton, near Oldham. You’ll get a great view at Manchester Airport, where it will dip to an altitude of 100ft.
Great chance to get some good pics – please send me any you take and I may publish them on this blog.
(Special note for real Lancaster buffs – PA474 was actually built by Vickers Armstrong in Chester!)

Tonight at 8

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Just a quick note to say that UK residents with access to Channel Five can see the documentary ‘Last of the Dambusters: Revealed’ again tonight at 8pm. It features one of the (now only four) surviving Dambusters, George ‘Johnny’ Johnson and his trip to France as a team of aircraft excavators dig up the Lancaster in which he flew on the Dams Raid. Later, he travels to the Sorpe Dam to see how the area has changed in the 65 years since the raid. He also meets people from the surrounding villages.
I’ve blogged about this programme before, when it was first shown in 2008 and when it was posted on Youtube.

Steady, steady – bomb gone! (part 2)

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Hardcore Microsoft Flight Simulator enthusiasts may already know about this, but others might not: Ross McLennan has spent a number of years developing a highly realistic Lancaster cockpit in which you can take part in the whole Dams Raid experience. I’m not an expert in this (and don’t even have a Windows computer on which I could use it) so I can’t comment on its accuracy or degree of fun. I’d welcome your comments!
It’s interesting to note that Ross’s simulated attack on the Möhne Dam follows the path outlined in most of the earlier books, from the east with a sharp starboard turn after crossing the Hever promontory. According to 617 Squadron historian Robert Owen this is no longer thought to be correct. The actual route is now thought to be directly from over the forest area in the south east coming over the larger spit, as seen in the lower map. This is the one I drew for my book, Breaking the Dams.
Attack route in Flight Simulator
Map showing what is now thought to be the actual attack route

Flg Off Ray Grayston, RIP

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Pic: Lincolnshire Aviation History Centre

I’m sorry to have to report that Ray Grayston died on Thursday 15 April.
Grayston was the flight engineer in Les Knight’s Lancaster, AJ-N, the ninth and final aircraft of the first wave of Operation Chastise, tasked with attacking the Möhne and Eder Dams. Five mines had been used at the Möhne before it had been breached, which left only three for the Eder, as Bill Astell had crashed en route. David Shannon and Henry Maudslay dropped their mines but did not break the dam, so Knight’s weapon presented the last chance for success.

As the engineer, Grayston sat on Knight’s right hand side as the pilot brought the Lancaster down to the required height of 60ft, using the throttles to keep the speed at 220mph. After a dummy run, which was dangerous enough for rear gunner Harry O’Brien to record afterwards that he ‘never thought they would get over the mountain’ on the other side of the dam, Knight brought AJ-N into attack. With a bright moon on the starboard beam, the mine was released, bounced three times and hit the dam wall. Knight climbed steeply and, as the aircraft reached a safe height, saw an explosion which caused a ‘large breach in wall of dam almost 30ft below top of dam, leaving top of dam intact.’
Wireless operator Bob Kellow had his head up in the astrodome, looking backwards. It seemed, he said ‘as if some huge fist had been jabbed at the wall, a large almost round black hole appeared and water gushed as from a large hose.’
The climb after the attack had been hair raising. Bomb aimer Edward Johnson said later that it ‘required the full attention of the pilot and engineer to lay on emergency power from the engines and a climbing attitude not approved in any flying manuals and a period of nail biting from the rest of us not least me who was getting too close a view of the approaching terra firma from my position in the bomb-aimer’s compartment.’
Like many young men of his generation, Ray Grayston was fascinated by flying and volunteered for the RAF at the beginning of the war. In a TV documentary to mark the 60th anniversary of the Dams Raid he described how he loved riding a motorbike at speed, and that this was one of the things which encouraged him into the air force. Initially he served as ground crew but then, along with many others who were mechanically minded, he was selected to train as a flight engineer on the new generation of heavy bombers which needed more personnel.
In late 1942, Grayston teamed up with Knight and the rest of the crew in their final stages of training, and they were part way through a tour of operations in 5o Squadron, stationed at RAF Swinderby, when they were offered the chance to transfer into a new squadron being formed at nearby Scampton for a secret special mission. They went as a group, as Kellow later explained: ‘The offer presented to us sounded interesting and with our faith in each member’s ability we made up our minds there and then that we would accept the offer and move over as a crew to this new squadron.’
Like many Lancaster crews of the time, they were from different countries and walks of life. Knight and Kellow were Australians, the gunners were both Canadian and the rest were British. Knight was an exceptional pilot even though, as Grayston later recalled, he couldn’t ride a bicycle or drive a car.
They didn’t fly over Germany again until September 1943, four months after the Dams Raid when they were sent out with another new weapon, a 12,000lb ‘thin case’ bomb, to attack the Dortmund Ems canal. It was a terrible night, with heavy fog blanketing the heavily guarded canal. Four of the eight crews who took part had already been shot down when Knight, flying at about 100ft in fog, hit some trees and badly damaged both his port engines.
This is one of the stories which Paul Brickhill tells beautifully in his 1951 book, The Dam Busters. With his tailplane and a starboard engine also damaged Knight managed to pull the Lancaster up to about 1,000ft and called his fellow Aussie Mick Martin, who had assumed command after the CO and deputy force head had both come to grief.

‘Two port engines gone. May I have permission to jettison bomb, sir?’ It was the ‘sir’ that got Martin. Quiet little Knight was following the copybook procedure, asking respectful permission to do the only thing that might get him home.
Martin said, ‘For God’s sake, Les, yes,’ and as the bomb was not fused Knight told Johnson to let it go. Relieved of the weight they started to climb very slowly…
The controls were getting worse all the time until, though he had full opposite rudder and aileron on, Knight could not stop her turning to port and it was obvious that he could never fly her home. He ordered his crew to bale out and held the plane steady while they did. When the last man [who was Grayston] had gone he must have tried to do the same himself,and must have known what would happen when he slipped out of his seat. There was perhaps a slight chance of getting clear in time, but as soon as he took pressure off stick and rudder the aircraft flicked on her back and plunged to the ground. Knight did not get to the hatch in time.
Grayston told the story again in a History Channel documentary, which you can still see online. He and the other five all landed safely. Three evaded capture but Grayston and O’Brien were captured and spent the rest of the war as PoWs. When the crew survivors met in later life they would toast the memory of the young pilot who had saved their lives.
Of the 133 men who took part in the Dams Raid only 48 survived the war. Over the last few years, this has dwindled to a handful and sadly now only Les Munro, George (Johnny) Johnson, Fred Sutherland and Grant MacDonald are still with us. Like them, Grayston had become something of a celebrity in his later years, and was regularly to be found taking part in documentaries, commemorations and signings. On all these occasions he was a model of courtesy, even when he was being asked to sign memorabilia by people only interested in making a profit from it on Ebay.
It’s something of a cliché to say that we won’t see the like of his generation again – but in Ray Grayston’s case it is certainly true. He was looking forward to seeing the remake of the 1955 film, and had been photographed at East Kirkby sitting with writer Stephen Fry in the cockpit of the Lancaster belonging to the Lincolnshire Aviation History Centre.
UPDATE: Daily Telegraph news article about Ray Grayston here and a formal obituary here.

A wizard show: RC Sherriff and The Dam Busters

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Say the name RC Sherriff to most people and their instant reaction is likely to be ‘the man who wrote Journey’s End.’ He is certainly best known for this, and the popular identification with his first widely produced play will surely grow all the while it remains on the GCSE set text list. The First World War classic was based on his own experiences serving in the trenches as a captain in the East Surrey Regiment.
It could also be argued, however, that Robert Cedric Sherriff deserves to be widely remembered for another reason, as the man who provided Hollywood with the first British ‘stiff upper lip’ characters – archetypes which persist today in the kind of roles given to actors like Colin Firth, Ralph Fiennes and Jeremy Irons.
Journey’s End was a huge success. First produced in late 1928, it then ran for two years in the West End, and went onto Broadway and other parts of the world. It enabled Sherriff to quit his job in insurance, first to go to study at Oxford and then to become a full time writer. He was lured to Hollywood by the legendary producer Sam Goldwyn (‘A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on’, ‘Include me out’, etc, etc) where he worked both as a writer of original screenplays and a script ‘doctor’. His original work included The Invisible Man and Goodbye Mr Chips, and his rewrites such wartime classics as Mrs Miniver.
In his BFI monograph, John Ramsden noticed the importance of the timing of his arrival in Hollywood, in the early 1930s.
At exactly the moment when sound films were about to sweep all before them, in 1928, Sherriff captured in Journey’s End the way in which a certain type of British officer and gentleman spoke and behaved. He then carried these manners and forms of expression into his screenplays, was much imitated in doing so, and saw them develop into clichés of cinematic Englishness.
(John Ramsden, The Dam Busters, Tauris, 2003, p.38.)
It’s worth noting that although Sherrif developed this style, he wasn’t himself from an upper middle class background. His father worked in insurance, and the young ‘Bob’ went to a grammar school, Kingston Grammar, not a public school. But his love of rowing and his service in the war as an officer would have brought him in touch with the kinds of people he is famous for depicting.
His understated style of writing is an important characteristic in what could be argued is Sherriff’s second most important work, the screenplay he wrote for The Dam Busters in 1954. There are many examples throughout this script where a character says just a word or two, but this is more than enough to drive the film’s narrative forward:
Gibson: ‘I wanted you for this. You’re the low-flying expert.’
Martin: ‘Low flying? Fine.’
—
WAAF: ‘Are you flying tonight?’
Pilot: ‘That’s the general idea.’
—
Wallace: ‘Why don’t you turn in, Gibby?’
Gibson: ‘I have to write some letters first.’
This last exchange is the final piece of dialogue in the film. As the music swells to a great climax, Wallis moves away and Gibson turns and walks back to his office, acknowledging the salute of a passing sergeant. We know that he is about to undertake the commanding officer’s most terrible duty.
Sherriff was nominated for a BAFTA for his script, one of the two nominations he got for this award in 1955. The other was for the lesser known The Night My Number Came Up, which also featured Dam Busters actors Michael Redgrave, Ursula Jeans, Nigel Stock and Bill Kerr. However both were beaten by the classic comedy, The Ladykillers.
By the time The Dam Busters was made, Sherriff was living more or less permanently back home in England, in a large house, Rosebriars, in Esher. Although he was described as a shy and retiring man (see this reference, scroll almost to the bottom of the page) he was still actively involved in rowing, and was a member of several clubs until he died.
This passion for rowing explains a number of references in The Dam Busters – Melvin (‘Dinghy’) Young’s Blue for rowing at Oxford and Henry Maudslay’s feat of being captain of rowing at Eton are both mentioned. Young’s actual Boat Race oar was even used as a prop on the set, A prop made to look like Young’s Boat Race oar features in the sequence after the raid, when the camera zooms in on various reminders of the aircrew who have failed to return. [Updated, January 2013]
Sherriff never married, and died in 1975 without leaving an heir. A trust was established with the money from his estate, and is used still to support arts activities in the borough of Elmbridge. And the boat club at his old school still uses his name for its fundraising and support activities.

Vincent MacCausland: letters and images

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Nearly two years ago, I published a post about an interview with the sister of Vincent MacCausland which I had found online. This was printed in his hometown paper, the Prince Edward Island Guardian, on the 65th anniversary of the Dams Raid. Now a lot more material about him has come to light.
MacCausland was the bomb aimer in Dinghy Young’s crew in Lancaster ED887, AJ-A, and was therefore responsible for dropping the fourth mine of the night, the one which caused the initial small breach in the Möhne Dam, later broken completely by David Maltby and his crew.
Joel Joy has been collecting further information about MacCausland, and has come up with a number of new bits of information and photographs which he has kindly allowed me to publish here.
Vincent MacCausland joined the RCAF in 1940, and after training as an observer and then a bomb aimer completed a first tour in 57 Squadron. He received a commission and appears to have returned to 57 Squadron, which had by then moved to RAF Scampton, for a second tour in March 1943. He was then drafted into a crew of newly qualified personnel allocated to the experienced pilot Melvin Young, when their original bomb aimer was found to be unsuitable. Young was the commander of 57 Squadron’s C Flight, and when the call came out for experienced crews to join the new 617 Squadron to undertake a special secret operation, the entire flight was moved across the base. These were the crews captained by Melvin Young, Geoff Rice, Bill Astell and Sgt Lovell. (The last was only to stay a few days, and were transferred back to 57 Squadron.)
Intensive training followed. Young was put in charge of A Flight, which gave him a number of extra responsibilities, including organising much of the training schedules.
One of the remarkable discoveries made by Joel Joy is that some of Vincent MacCausland’s letters home are in a Canadian archive, the Canadian Letters and Images Project, based in Vancouver. They go back to 1940, when he first joined the RCAF.
Only one, written on 17 April 1943, survives from this period. In it he writes:
You are perhaps wondering what I am doing here. There is really no need to feel over anxious to know that I am back again for my second tour. I really was due back six months after Sept of 41 and had the privilege of joining a well experienced crew and on aircraft that one dreams about. To tell you the honest truth I would not have taken this on had I believed it was a doubtful move. I came up here a couple of days ago (Apr 14th) and we are on revision and conversion for the next month before going over with a few bundles for the squareheads I know that you will be feeling most anxious during those few months ahead but the time will soon pass and I know that God will be especially with us as were blessed in that first tour. I hope that we shall be writing at least two to three times per week and if you do the same, it will be much happier for us all.
Sadly, the blessings that were bestowed on him in his first tour would not follow him to his second. Having been so instrumental in the destruction of the Möhne Dam, Young was detailed to act as Gibson’s deputy at the Eder. After it too was blown by Knight’s successful mine drop, Gibson, Shannon, Knight, Maudslay and Young set off for home. Unfortunately the latter two – the squadron’s two flight commanders – didn’t get back. AJ-A was shot down crossing the Dutch coast near IJmuiden, and crashed into the sea. The bodies of all its crew were washed ashore during the following two weeks.
All seven are buried in the cemetery near Bergen.
Two more contemporary items are shown here. These are the missing and death notices published in the Toronto Globe and Mail. The first of these, from June 1943, gives the names of all the Canadians who went missing on Operation Chastise (including John Fraser, who was later discovered to have baled out and been sent to a PoW camp). The second, from December, gives the list of those confirmed dead.
Post edited, November 2010. The correct number for the aircraft AJ-A piloted by Sqn Ldr HM Young on the Dams Raid was ED887/G.

Barnes Wallis in Hendon

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Photo by mickb6265

It’s a long time since I’ve had a proper look around the RAF Museum in Hendon, North London. On my last visit I was in a rush to get to the research library upstairs. So I’ve missed the fact that there is a re-creation of Barnes Wallis’s office in the exhibition hall, complete with his real drawing board and other paraphernalia. From this picture it looks as though the famous photograph of the Möhne lake after the dam was broken is hanging in the corner. Wallis brought this to the party in the Hungaria restaurant after the Buckingham Palace investiture ceremony, where it was signed by most of the surviving aircrew who took part in the raid.

Full set of mickb’s pictures are here on Flickr.