Guy Gibson - dambuster

243 Pages·2013·2.02 MB·English

by  Gibson

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
Pen & Sword Aviation
an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street
Barnsley
South Yorkshire
S70 2AS

Copyright © Geoff Simpson 2013
9781783469734

The right of Geoff Simpson to be identified as the Author of this Work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

Typeset in Ehrhardt by
Mac Style, Driffield, East Yorkshire
Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon,
CRO 4YY

Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the Imprints of Pen & Sword
Aviation, Pen & Sword Maritime, Pen & Sword Military, Wharncliffe
Local History, Pen and Sword Select, Pen & Sword Military Classics,
Leo Cooper, The Praetorian Press, Remember When, Seaforth
Publishing and Frontline Publishing.
For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact
PEN & SWORD BOOKS LIMITED
47 Church Street, Barnsley, South Yorkshire, S70 2AS, England
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.pen-and-sword.co.uk
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
GUY GIBSON – DAM BUSTER
Introduction
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Chapter 1 - Early Life
Chapter 2 - Towards a Career
Chapter 3 - Flying the Hampden
Chapter 4 - Phoney War
Chapter 5 - Destroying the Barges
Chapter 6 - Into the Night
Chapter 7 - Closer to London
Chapter 8 - Back to Bombers
Chapter 9 - Gus Walker at Syerston
Chapter 10 - Why the Dams?
Chapter 11 - Preparing the Way
Chapter 12 - To the Dams
Chapter 13 - Two Very Different Debates
Chapter 14 - Anti-Climax
Chapter 15 - The Final Flight
Chapter 16 - The Film
Chapter 17 - Mrs Gibson
Appendix 1 - Birth Of A Legend
Appendix 2 - Guy Gibson the Man
Appendix 3 - Harris and Gibson
Appendix 4 - Gibson’s Dog
Appendix 5 - Notes on Some People in the Gibson Story
Appendix 6 - The Squadrons and the Airfields
Appendix 7 - The Crews and the Decorations
Appendix 8 - Some Memorials
Appendix 9 - Citations for Guy Gibson’s Decorations
Bibliography
Index
GUY GIBSON – DAM BUSTER
There are no words with which I can do justice to the aircrew who
fought under my command. There is no parallel in warfare to such
courage and determination in the face of danger over so prolonged a
period, of danger which at times was so great that scarcely one man
in three could expect to survive his tour of operations.
Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Harris, Bomber Offensive, 1947
Poppies bloom in the fallow fields of Lincolnshire, sudden outbreaks
of red in a verdant landscape – nature’s unintended tribute to the
thousands of young men who flew from this place into the dark heart
of Nazi Germany, never to return.
The Second World War lingers here, in bomber country. Small
memorials commemorating long-disbanded squadrons mark rural
crossroads, and white headstones adorned with the Royal Air Force
crest dot medieval churchyards. Lincolnshire is far from prairie flat
but it enjoys a big sky. It needed to be big in the years 1942 to 1945
when, as the epicentre of RAF Bomber Command, the county was
home to hundreds of Avro Lancasters.
Neil Tweedie, writing in the The Daily Telegraph, 27 June 2012
Introduction
That Guy Gibson, almost seventy years after his death, remains, in the public’s
mind, one of the great British heroes of the Second World War cannot be
disputed.
There were many successful and heroic RAF pilots in the war. Very few of
them, seven decades later, have any claim to be thought of as names familiar to
those beyond the historians, authors and researchers who study the period. In
that sense, Gibson is one of the few. To some extent this is because he was
selected at the time to be a public figure as part of Britain’s war effort. The
attack on the dams was regarded as a spectacular success when it took place,
both for the destruction it caused and for its value in lifting morale and
impressing Britain’s allies.
Gibson had planned and led the attack brilliantly and was the natural person to
be pushed forward when a figurehead was needed.
His tragic death, aged twenty-six, added to the aura around him, as famous
and youthful death usually does. Then, in the 1950s Paul Brickhill’s book,
followed by the film, The Dam Busters (or The Dambusters as the story has
gradually become) firmly implanted the legend in many minds. A battered
paperback copy of the Brickhill book, with schoolboy annotations from the
1950s, sits a few inches from me as I write.
The musical march for the film provided, somewhat reluctantly at first, by
Eric Coates helped the process along, remaining an instantly recognisable piece
of music. One result of the film is that most people picture Gibson, not as the
man he was, but as the actor who played him.
That was the best part of sixty years ago, but the process has continued. In the
1990s a young newspaper reporter, clearly star-struck, recounted to me how she
had recently interviewed some of the Dam Busters. ‘To be in the same room!’
was her theme.
Nor is the legend immune to modern technology. Those who understand these
things may now play with The Dambusters App, in which the chance is offered