Proud daughter tells of war hero dad's brave Dambusters mission 80 years on
That Wing Commander Guy Gibson was hoping for a miracle, almost as much as the young mother he was writing to, is clear even in his stark typewritten letter confirming her hero husband was missing.
The evident emotion is perhaps surprising in a military man writing in his official capacity.
But as the 24-year-old leader of the Dambusters mission, he must have felt viscerally the loss of every man that night, 80 years ago today.
And viscerally, too, for every parent, wife, girlfriend and child they left behind.
Sergeant Wilfred Ibbotson, 29, was among the crew from 617 Squadron RAF that carried out audacious raids on the Mohne, Eder and Sorpe dams in Germany’s Ruhr Valley.
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Lancaster bouncing bomb test (Mirrorpix)He dropped to just 60ft above water in the darkness to dispense Sir Barnes Wallis’s bouncing bomb, helping achieve immense Allied gains that night in Germany’s industrial centre. But of the 133 crew who flew out that night, 53 airmen in eight of the mission’s 19 Lancaster bombers did not make it home, and Wilfred was one of them.
Waiting for news of him back home in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, was his wife Doris, with their nine-month-old baby Pat and four-year-old daughter Pam.
Telling how her husband went missing in the raid, Wing Commander Gibson wrote: “His aircraft was seen to drop its load on the target, with great precision, and then turn for home.
“Somewhere, however, near the enemy coast, it must have encountered trouble, as nothing further was heard from it.
“It is possible that the crew [was] able to abandon the aircraft and land safely in enemy territory...
“The captain of the aircraft, [Squadron Leader] MW Young DPC would, I am confident, do everything in his power to ensure the safety of his crew.” He added: “Please accept my sincere sympathy during this anxious period of waiting.”
Wilfred Ibbotson with wife Doris (Andy Stenning/Daily Mirror)
Letter from Gibson (Andy Stenning/Daily Mirror)Gibson’s letter is treasured by Wilfred’s daughter Pam, now 84, who never did see her dad again.
Three months after it arrived there came another letter confirming that Wilfred’s body had washed ashore on a Dutch beach behind enemy lines.
Wilfred’s granddaughter Deb Wolftenholme, 57, from County Durham, describes mum Pam’s memory of that heartbreaking news. “She remembers she and Grandma [Doris] crying and wiping their eyes on a towel,” she says.
Her understanding is that Wilfred’s aircraft, Lancaster ED887 AJ-A, had dropped its bomb on the Mohne dam, then stayed longer on the mission, switching to the Eder dam to support Guy Gibson and his crew.
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She says: “They went out in the first wave to the Mohne dam and their bomb made a small breach, then another plane followed and caused the major breach. Their breach meant when the next plane came, it went down.
“Then they went to the Eder dam because that’s where Guy Gibson and his plane went. They were ordered to shadow Gibson in case anything happened to him and they had to take control. They weren’t needed, so then they set off to come home. They were shot at the last moment they could have been hit by the guns – metres from being safe.
The Mohne Dam after the Dambusters raid 80 years ago (Getty Images)“The plane came down in the sea and the bodies began to wash up after five days. My grandfather’s body was the last.”
Pam’s only memory connected to her father is the day she cheekily put his socks in a milk jug left out for the milkman. “She can’t remember his reaction,” smiles Deb.
But she does recall, some time later, her mother suffering a breakdown.
“She says as a small child she alternated between wondering if she had done something wrong and that was why he hadn’t come back, and thinking it hadn’t been real and he would come back,” says Deb.
Doris eventually remarried and the family lived happily, but they always spoke of Wilfred. The seven crew of AJ-A were buried by Dutch families in Bergen, near Castricum aan Zee beach where they washed ashore.
Their graves were tended by the Dutch families for decades.
Deb says: “Grandma always had a Dutch calendar on the wall sent by a family there.”
After the war Doris was invited to visit, but could not afford it.
However, she and her second husband did eventually go. And when Doris died, Pat scattered some of her mum’s ashes on her father’s grave.
There is now also a memorial on the beach to the crew, which the family has visited. They have even been given a piece of the wreckage of AJ-A.
Deb says: “We were told the Germans used the wings as defences during the war, they put them into the sand as barricades.”
Last December Squadron Leader Johnny Johnson became the last of the Dambusters veterans to pass away, but the mission remains the stuff of legend, especially since the 1955 film.
Wing Commander Guy Gibson, far left (PA)On May 16, 1943, Bomber Command tasked 617 Squadron, made up of 133 British, Australian, New Zealand and US airmen, with destroying the Ruhr’s three key dams in Operation Chastise.
Armed with Barnes Wallis’s 4.2-ton bouncing bombs, the Lancaster bombers breached the Mohne and Eder dams and devastated the Sorpe.
The crews had to release their bombs at exactly 1,280ft to make sure they bounced over each anti-torpedo net to hit the target. In moonlight, it was a near-impossible task.
Wilfred’s aircraft, piloted by Sqn Ldr Melvin Young, was the fourth to attack the Mohne and the first to breach it.
The raids brought floods that swept away factories, bridges, railways and energy infrastructure, killing 1,300 and costing Germany billions in repairs.
Now RAF Scampton, the Lincolnshire base from which they departed, is threatened with Home Office plans to turn it into a migrant camp for 2,000 asylum seekers.
This derails levelling-up plans to use Scampton as a base for aviation and aerospace excellence.
For Pam, the 80th anniversary of the mission is a solemn occasion.
Daughter Deb says: “Mum says it makes her think of all the years she has had, that he didn’t get to have.”
* The RAF Benevolent Fund, the RAF’s leading welfare charity, supports current and former RAF members, partners and dependants. Cycle fundraiser the Dambusters Ride was held at the weekend, with a virtual one this weekend. See rafbf.org/dambusters.
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