Ted Barris - Dam Busters: Canadian Airmen and the Secret Raid Against Nazi Germany

H E WAS YOUNGSTILL IN HIS TEENSA LITTLE bit nervous but overall terribly excited by the moment. He peered out the mid-upper gunners turret at a vast expanse of water spreading toward the shoreline a few kilometres distant. It was loud, very loud, inside the Lancaster, the four huge Rolls-Royce Merlin engines pounding away with a rhythm that made it virtually impossible to hear anything else. He scanned the sky, looking for anything sharing the space, but there was nothing. The plane and its occupants were alone, dancing past the clouds, aloft in the most famous Allied bomber of all time.

But this wasnt the English Channel he was flying over and that wasnt the enemy coast ahead. In fact, it was Lake Ontario on a beautiful summers day, dotted with sailboats enjoying the peace of the world we live in today. And in the distance was the CN Tower, pointing skyward from the middle of Canadas largest city. For my son, William Stanley Mansbridge, this was a day to remember. This flight was the result of a night in 2015 when Will had seen his name drawn from hundreds of others during a fundraiser for the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton, Ontario. The big prize was a flight in one of only two Lancasters anywhere in the world still capable of navigating the skies. One belongs to the Royal Air Force in Britain, the other to the good people at the CWHM who, thanks to donors, keep the grand old aircraft airworthy and flying throughout the warm months of the year.

Wills grandfather knew the Lancaster, knew it intimately. He had not only seen the enemy coast ahead, he had also seen the enemy. Seen it close up and many times during two tours and more than fifty missions over Europe. W/C Stanley Mansbridge was a navigator and bomb aimer with RAF No. 49 Squadron, No. 5 Group, based at Scampton, England. He was much decorated, including with a Distinguished Flying Cross for his part in the famous raid on Peenemnde in August 1943, where the Nazis were developing the V-1 rocket. The raid didnt end the V-1 story, but it did delay the rockets introduction as a weapon of war by at least six months, a critical period that may have changed the course of the war.

Like so many veterans of that conflict, my father rarely talked about it. Hed seen too much horror and lost too many friendsmany reached the point where making friends was something they found just too emotional to do. But as he got older and I got older, he felt an obligation to pass on some of his experiences. He didnt talk about himself and his exploits but he did talk about others. And one of those was another RAF wing commander, Guy Gibson, who led perhaps the most famous bombing mission of the warthe dam busters raid. Gibson, was the commanding officer of 617 Squadron, 5 Group, and, like my father, was also based at RAF Scampton. Most of those guys were in their twenties, risking their lives most nights while flying the skies in Lancasters with airframes so thin they seem comparable to todays beer cans. Inside it was freezing cold and cramped, and the seven-man crew shared space with thousands of pounds of high explosives. In downtimes, theyd hit the mess at Scampton with other squadrons and at times, not surprisingly, those became moments of youthful excess. Stanley Mansbridge remembered Guy Gibson at the bar and around the billiards table. He recalled a brash, handsome, extremely self-confident fellow who loved the camaraderie and cared deeply about his fellow flyers. He was known to handwrite personal comments about fallen colleagues at the bottom of formal letters sent out by the Air Ministry to grieving parents.

My father talked about Gibson with extreme admiration. Ill always remember him sitting in his living room chair, trying to explain to me how Gibson had won his Victoria Cross. Hed hold his hands out and use his palms to show how Gibson guided his Lancaster on bombing run after bombing run over the Ruhr dams, protecting his fellow Lancaster mates as they dropped their bouncing bombs. These sorties took incredible courage and my father would get emotional each time he told the story.

But he told me something else about Gibson: he said when Gibson handpicked the crews that would train for the raid, he had a particular affection for the courage and skill of Canadian flyers, and as a result, many made the cut. I didnt know that. And Ive rarely heard much discussion about it. In the pages ahead, that all changes. My friend Ted Barris is a terrific chronicler of great Canadian accomplishments in our military past, accomplishments often forgotten by history. In Dam Busters, Ted ensures that we remember.

A final note about Will, me, and our hero, Stanley Mansbridge. Stanley passed in 2005. We will always miss him. When I flew in the Lancaster as part of a CBC documentary crew a few years ago, I took with me his DFC and held it close to my heart. When Will flew in the Lancaster, he took his memories of his grandfather along too. Three generations of Mansbridges have now flown in a Lancastera privilege we will cherish forever.

Peter Mansbridge, OC

Stratford, Ontario

April 2018