John Nichol - Return of the Dambusters - What 617 Squadron Did Next

In some ways the tail gunners had the worst job, with the greatest amount of time to ponder their fate. One rear gunner found it:

a very lonely job, cold and lonely, stuck out at the back of the aircraft with no one to glance at for reassurance or a little comfort. The first op was the worst; the only person who knew what it would be like was the skipper, because he had been on one op before with another crew. And he wouldn’t tell us what it was going to be like; he didn’t want to put the wind up us. We were naive and quite happy to trust to luck. Oh, I was afraid, especially of what was to come, the unknown, but you just couldn’t show it.

The odds were stacked against us, we knew that at the time, knew that the losses were huge. It’s not a particularly nice thought, but once you were in that situation you just had to carry on and do the job you were trained for, and you just blotted out everything else. You ignored the flak, ignored the aircraft going down around you. What else could you do? In many ways you were stuck in the middle of that horror, those losses. You don’t ‘cope’ with it, do you? You just do it. 43

Having been specifically formed for that single op against the dams, it now appeared to pilots like Les ‘Happy’ Munro (also known as ‘Smiler’ – both nicknames were sarcastic, because he was famed for his dour demeanour) that ‘nobody knew what to do with us. There was a hiatus, a sense of frustration. What was 617 Squadron for? The powers that be couldn’t seem to make up their minds about what to do with this special squadron they’d created.’ Munro was a New Zealander, but had enlisted because of:

a general feeling that we were part of the British Empire, and had an allegiance to King and Country. We were really aware, through radio broadcasts and cinema newsreels, of what Britain was facing and what they were being subjected to: the air attacks, the Blitz. It was a sense of duty for most of us young men in New Zealand to fight for ‘the old country’ against the Nazis, but of course I had no idea at all of what would happen to me or what was to come: the devastation, the dangers, the losses I’d see and experience. Nor that seventy years on I’d still be talking about it!

‘Being on 617 meant that there could be quite a long gap between ops,’ another crewman says.

I remember going on leave and meeting friends from my engineers’ course who had nearly finished their thirty-op tour whilst I’d only done three or four. That’s when you began to understand how different 617 was. My friends said I was a ‘lucky bastard’ for being on 617 and not Main Force, and they were probably right – I wouldn’t have liked to be on MF from all the stories I heard and read afterwards. 44

617’s lack of ops led aircrew from 57 Squadron, also based at Scampton, to shower them with jibes and insults and give them the sardonic nickname ‘The One-op Squadron’. The men of 617 retaliated by ‘debagging many of the Fifty-Seven men in a scragging session in the Officers’ Mess’, 45but they also ruefully acknowledged their reputation in their own squadron song, which they sang to the tune of a hymn written in 1899, ‘Come and Join Our Happy Throng’:

The Möhne and Eder dams were standing in the Ruhr,

617 Squadron bombed them to the floor.

Since that operation the squadron’s been a flop,

And we’ve got the reputation of the squadron with one op.

Come and join us,

Come and join us,

Come and join our happy throng.

Selected for the squadron with the finest crews,

But the only thing they’re good for is drinking all the booze.

They’re not afraid of Jerry and they don’t care for the Wops,

Cos they only go to Boston to do their bloody ops.

Come and join us …

To all you budding aircrew who want to go to heaven,

Come join the forces of good old 617.

The Main Force go to Berlin and are fighting their way back,

But we only go to Wainfleet where there isn’t any flak.

Come and join us …

Come and join our happy throng. 46

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