Today is the 80th anniversary of the Dam Busters Raid. Nineteen Lancaster bombers powered towards German targets. Eight crashed or were shot down. Fifty-three airmen were killed. Some were captured. It was an important raid and the survivors were lauded. A book was written about the raid; a film lionised them. But the raid left a traumatic legacy for some of its survivors including survivor guilt. A legacy we don’t often consider. As part of my PhD studies – and in my next book – I consider how the Dam Bust
Twenty-one year old Anthony ‘Tony’ Burcher of 617 Squadron RAF was a gunner on one of the aircraft which bombed the Möhne Dam during Operation Chastise – the dam buster raid . The Lancaster was mortally damaged but its pilot, John Hopgood, aware that in effect he was committing suicide, continued to fly, gaining height to ensure his still living crew had the best chance of baling out. Just about to jump, Burcher saw John Minchin, the RAF wireless operator, crawling on hands and knees, dragging his leg,
In trying to understand why both men committed suicide in late life, Burcher indicated that it was linked to the ill-treatment after capture which both (he imagined) experienced at the hands of the Gestapo. Burcher implied his guilt at their fate, and perhaps vicarious culpability in their deaths, by highlighting the disparity between his friends’ treatment and his own. He had been taken to a hospital and received the best of care. ‘But if they were got hold of by the Gestapo, I think that might have worrie