The 617 Squadron was led by Guy Gibson (third from right)
(Picture: Getty Images)At the age of 101, the final survivor of the 1943 Dambuster bouncing bomb raid has passed away.
George Leonard “Johnny" Johnson served as a bomb-aimer in the 617 squadron, which during World War II destroyed crucial dams in Germany's industrial Ruhr basin.
But what happened during the Dambuster raid?
What was the Dambuster raid?
Wing Commander Guy Gibson led the Royal Air Force's 617 Squadron on a daring bombing mission to destroy three dams in the Ruhr valley, Germany's industrial heartland, on the night of May 16–17, 1943. Operation Chastise was the codename for the mission.
The dams were zealously guarded. They were protected from enemy bombers by anti-aircraft weapons and undersea torpedo nets that blocked underwater strikes.
Vickers Armstrong's assistant chief designer Barnes Wallis developed the concept for a novel new weapon known as “the bouncing bomb" but codenamed “Upkeep."
It was a 9,000-pound cylindrical mine that was designed to bounce across the surface of the water until it hit a dam.
There were just eight weeks of intensive low-level training and technical preparation before the raid. Nobody in the 617 Squadron except for its most senior members was aware of the targets until the briefing on the day of the raid itself.
The Ruhr valley was devastated by catastrophic flooding brought on by the bombing raid, which also destroyed factories and hydroelectric power plants. According to the Imperial War Museum, there are believed to have been 1,300 fatalities on the ground.
Of the 133 crew members who took part, 53 were killed in the raid and three were captured. Johnson, who was born in Lincolnshire and lived in Bristol, was 21 at the time.
The only living Dambuster pilot, Les Munro, passed away in 2015 at the age of 96. Only Johnson and Canadian front-gunner Fred Sutherland remained after his death. In 2019, Sutherland died aged 95.
The Dam Busters, a 1955 film starring Michael Redgrave as Barnes Wallis and Richard Todd as Wing Commander Guy Gibson, the operation's commander, immortalised the raids and Wallis's role in designing the bomb.
