This is an update of part of Chapter 9 of that book, with new information that has arisen since, in particular a previously unpublished navigator’s log kept by Sgt Wilfred Johnson, navigator in the 605 Squadron Mosquito piloted by Plt Off Arthur Woods, which was on attachment to 617 Squadron. The original account was based on my research at the National Archives in Kew and other sources, to which I was guided by Len Cairns (in whose debt I remain). For the September operation, targeted at the Dortmund-Ems canal, an extra air gunner, Wrt Off John Welch DFM, was added to the crew. They dropped the weapon which caused the dam’s final breach. This RAF 617 Squadron crew was the same one which had flown on the Dams Raid in Lancaster ED906 AJ-J just four months earlier, when they were in the fifth aircraft to attack the Möhne Dam. ( AIR 24/259, National Archives).īack in 2008, in my book Breaking the Dams, I wrote an account of the last flight taken by David Maltby and his crew on the night of 14/15 September 1943. It is one of the three contemporary documents which each record that a collision had taken place between a 617 Squadron Lancaster and a Mosquito from 139 Squadron. This photograph shows a detail from the official minutes of a meeting of the Air Officials Administration Conference which took place in the Air Ministry in London on the afternoon of 15 September 1943, about 15 hours after Lancaster JA981, piloted by Sqn Ldr David Maltby DSO DFC of 617 Squadron, had crashed into the North Sea.
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