dailymail.co.uk/news/article … ed-96.html
Thank you sir.
I would like to think that he is now having a pint with long lost comrades.
Well said Cav. It’s absolutely staggering to think what a bunch of kids, and make no mistake that’s what they were, can accomplish when pushed to the limits.
remember seeing a documentary about the dams raid,
one of the pilots said that during a training run they were flying at 30 odd feet above the water,then Les Munro flew underneath them!!!
On the 60th anniversary weekend of the dams raid, I was on a training weekend at raf waddington. In the officers mess at lunchtime on the Saturday, we got chatting to 3 or 4 of the raid veterans, who were there as honoured guests, and later flown to scampton in the bbmf lanc. They were great to talk to, very quiet and modest. One of our lot asked what Guy Gibson was like - ‘an absolute ■■■■■■■■ but wouldn’t have got the job done if he hadn’t been’. One of the most memorable times of my life, rip Les.
RIP Les 
I stood under a Lancaster at the RAF Museum in Hendon on Saturday - very awe inspiring and quite humbling seeing up close the actual work space they were in…!!!
DAF95XF:
RIP Les
I stood under a Lancaster at the RAF Museum in Hendon on Saturday
A Lancaster…just A Lancaster? … it is the most famous Lancaster in existence! 
And haunted (allegedly)!
You need to sit down & drink a few whiskies with an actual, bona fide bomber crew member to fully understand the whole inglorious nature of the job.
I did when I was 14 & it fair brought a tear to my eye.
There are very many misconceptions surrounding what it was actually like. Spread mostly by Hollywood & re-inforced by those who were’nt actually there.
scaniason:
On the 60th anniversary weekend of the dams raid, I was on a training weekend at raf waddington. In the officers mess at lunchtime on the Saturday, we got chatting to 3 or 4 of the raid veterans, who were there as honoured guests, and later flown to scampton in the bbmf lanc. They were great to talk to, very quiet and modest. One of our lot asked what Guy Gibson was like - ‘an absolute [zb], but wouldn’t have got the job done if he hadn’t been’. One of the most memorable times of my life, rip Les.
Gibson didn’t live long after the raid, died in a Mosquito crash the following year. I read there was a good chance he was friendly fired by a Lancaster who thought the Mosquito was a German night fighter (forget the type of plane, a Messerschmitt I think).
I also read that Gibsons’ ghost haunts one of the airfields he flew from.
I just don’t get it though… If you listen to radio two in the cab, like me, you may have heard someone saying something along the lines of " he’s up there in the sky in his Lancaster again ", and my reaction was " why on earth would he want to revisit (even as a spirit or whatever) the place where he spent many terrified nights, experiencing his friends die grisly deaths, wondering if he would suffer the same, whilst (neccesarily) visiting death and misery on others?
Surely things like family, a long life and career after the few years of the war would have more value to him, if he could choose?
My impression from talking with various WW2 veterans over the years was that their opinions ranged from utter condemnation of the whole sorry affair and the politicians who failed to prevent it, to, at best, seeng it as a necessary, but horrendous, episode in their lives which detracted from the real business of life of raising a family and living a full, happy life.
We seem to have moved, as a society from solemn remembrance and grief, to some sort of spectacle of remembrance as a sort of “pantomime or fete of War”- look at those blokes who dress up as Great War soldiers at the cenotaph - they aren’t serving soldiers - why have actors, if it’s not a form of entertainment. I.a but suspicious of the motives of those people who used to hang around Wooton Bassett too - the bikers and such forth - what was that all about?
TheBorg:
You need to sit down & drink a few whiskies with an actual, bona fide bomber crew member to fully understand the whole inglorious nature of the job.
I’ve sat in a bar with former Canadian Air Force Lancaster crews, they didn’t tell me the lurid stories, they keep that to themselves, but got a slight idea of what they went through and as you say not glamorous.
I also used to work with a somebody that was ground crew on a bomber station, people don’t realise they they saw and dealt with some pretty horrible things when a shot up plane got back.
However it just made more in awe of what these seemingly normal guys did when they were mostly only 19-20 years old.
Shandy123:
I just don’t get it though… If you listen to radio two in the cab, like me, you may have heard someone saying something along the lines of " he’s up there in the sky in his Lancaster again ", and my reaction was " why on earth would he want to revisit (even as a spirit or whatever) the place where he spent many terrified nights, experiencing his friends die grisly deaths, wondering if he would suffer the same, whilst (neccesarily) visiting death and misery on others?
Surely things like family, a long life and career after the few years of the war would have more value to him, if he could choose?
My impression from talking with various WW2 veterans over the years was that their opinions ranged from utter condemnation of the whole sorry affair and the politicians who failed to prevent it, to, at best, seeng it as a necessary, but horrendous, episode in their lives which detracted from the real business of life of raising a family and living a full, happy life.
We seem to have moved, as a society from solemn remembrance and grief, to some sort of spectacle of remembrance as a sort of “pantomime or fete of War”- look at those blokes who dress up as Great War soldiers at the cenotaph - they aren’t serving soldiers - why have actors, if it’s not a form of entertainment. I.a but suspicious of the motives of those people who used to hang around Wooton Bassett too - the bikers and such forth - what was that all about?
I worked in a warehouse after leaving school and a lot of the old bloke there had fought in the WW2, and they didn’t talk about it loads and I didn’t ask, but sometimes the subject would come up and whilst they had lost 5 years of their youth and saw horrible things. It was their youth and a very intense time of their life, they also remembered good times during and lost friends with fondness, and the mind if a great thing for filtering out the worst and remembering the rest with rose tinted specs.
I’m sure for Les Munro going back in a Lancaster was more about remembering the good times of his youth.
I think our recent increased interest in remembrance has something to do with the fact in the last few years WW1 has moved from living memory to history and those who served in WW2 are now in their 90’s and we realise that will soon be history coupled with the recent conflicts and the inevitable after mouth.
I believe a lot of the bikers at Wooton Bassett are ex-forces, ex-forces or veteran biker groups seem to be very big in the US.
133 young men flew on the Dams raid … only 45 survived the war.
It is quite extraordinary what went on in those times. I’m currently reading The Red Line by ex RAF navigator John Nichol, which details a particularly hellish operation over Germany by Bomber Command. Often these aircraft were going up every night for days on end. This a particularly good read; another (fictional) favourite is “Bomber” by Len Deighton.
This is also very interesting:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=eqQAA2rcBno
RIP sir, true hero 
as a child I lived in soest and the moehne dam and moehne see as in lake is an tourist attraction. Used to fish it too. Many campsites around it too. Brilliant mind to come up with the bouncing bombs but as moaster says, it’s amazing what young soldiers/ airmen and sailors can do as they were kids themselves really. RIP les 
i lost an old friend last year ( he was 96 ) ex bomber command , he did his 32 trip tour on wellingtons and lancasters , shot down twice over the channel and had his heel shot off by aa fire . his take was simple . " they go on about this battle and that battle but we fought a battle every time we flew " when he finished his tour he refused another tour ( as a volunteer he had that option ) he was quite convinced that he was pushing his luck too far . he finished the war in the far east , india , burma etc . after the war he sold his medals " useless bits of tin " as he put it , "they couldn’t give medals to the 55000 dead men " . would our generation have done it ? dave
rigsby:
would our generation have done it ? dave
Yeah I believe they would Dave. Ever since the days of Celtic attacks on Roman chariots up until Iraq and Afghan our young men have stood up to be counted when the poop has hit the fan. Our generation is no different in that we are quick to judge the hoodie hanging around outside the off licence, but if we look beyond our prejudice we can see (recently anyway) these same hoodies performing acts of truly humbling heroism once they have a gun in their hand and a flowery uniform on. There are lots of serving and recently serving forces guys where I live and it’s heartbreaking to see the appalling injuries that they have suffered particularly in Afghan, but to a man they are immensely proud of what they have done. They make me incredibly proud to be British too.
So yes Dave, I honestly do think that this generation would have done it too.
Let us not forget that the intention of these raids was to drown thousands of innocent civilians who were sleeping in their beds at night, and that is precisely what happened.
same as the intention to carpet bomb coventry , they sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind .
Cosmic:
Let us not forget that the intention of these raids was to drown thousands of innocent civilians who were sleeping in their beds at night, and that is precisely what happened.
Wrong.
The intention was to disrupt power source to the Ruhr by incapacitating the 13 Hydro-Elecrtric plants at the Dams foot, and the mouth of the River Muelheim that were supplying over 250000hp. Disruption to Coke Ovens, Chemical works, Coal mines and water transportation was secondary. The flooding of vast amounts of other land was an added …for want of a better word…a bonus.
Actual civilians killed range from 1,600 (Source BBC 1943) to 1,243 (source official records from the Bundesarchiv 1946) these figures included 740 Ukrainian slave labour persons. so hardly thousands.
Compare that with the deliberate attacks on British cities during the blitz period 1940-41 when 40,000 civilians were killed by indiscriminate bombing. We shall not mention Rotterdam Dublin and as far back as 1937 and the bombing by the German air force of Guernica during the Spanish civil War.