80 years ago today: Original period Kodachrome of Wing Commander Guy Penrose Gibson, VC, DSO & Bar, DFC & Bar, commander of No. 617 Squadron (now known as the “Dambusters”) at Scampton, Lincolnshire, 22 July 1943.
Notably, Gibson is shown just a couple of months after Operation Chastise and just over a year before his loss. Appropriately, he is in a field of poppy flowers.
Born in colonial India in 1918– his father was an officer in the Imperial Indian Forestry Service– he was an aviation fan. He had a photo of Great War ace Albert Ball (44 victories) on his wall as a lad. Failing his first physical for the RAF, he was finally granted entry (for a short service commission) in November 1936 and earned his wings after “average” marks in 1937. Opting for bomber service, he began flying Hawker Hinds with No. 83 Squadron in 1938. Seconded to Coastal Command after the war started, he spent most of 1940 laying mines and earned an aerial kill against a German bomber over the Channel.
Reassigned to No. 29 Squadron to fly Bristol Beaufighters in late 1940 into early 1942, he chalked up several further kills on German bombers until he made it back to Bomber Command as a 23-year-old Wing Commander with No.106 Squadron, flying the new four-engined Avro Lancaster, earning a DSO in a series of daring raids, with 172 sorties under his belt across Axis-held territory.
Chosen to help build up “Squadron X” for Operation Chastise– the attack on the strongly-defended Möhne and Edersee dams on the Rhur, he personally flew one of the 19 bombers sent on the suicide mission. The famous “Dambusters” raid should have never worked, but it did.
Post-Chastise, Gibson toured the U.S. and Canada as a hero, then returned to flying as a staff officer at No. 54 Base, RAF Coningsby, he volunteered to fly a control sortie during an attack at the controls of a Mosquito– a type he only had nine hours in– and was lost 19 September 1944 (aged 26) over
Steenbergen, Netherlands.