RAF Scampton, 617 Squadron and the Dams Raid.

Monday 2nd September 2019 at RAF Scampton.
RAF Scampton has a Heritage Centre, so we had applied to arrange a tour and, after filling in a few forms, were accepted for today at 11:00am. A bit of research showed that there was a bus to RAF Scampton that would get us there at 10:45. No Problem?
The bus was a bit late, dropped us at the married quarters and the bus driver said he had no idea where the main gate was (it later turned out that he drives past it!).
We stopped a passing motorist who said it was back to the main road and a few hundred yards to the left - about a third of a mile with no footpath along a very busy major A road. We ended up legging it against the clock and arrived just as the "tour" was about to leave the main gate. Everyone else was in their cars so the guides gave us a lift in theirs into the base and over to the Heritage Centre, which is housed in one of the original hangars. The guides are all civilians and the Centre is run by a charity, not by the RAF.
There were about 15 of us and we were broken up into three groups. Our group started with the "Timeline" that covered the history of the RAF from the days of the Royal Flying Corps through to the present day.
We learned that the reason that the RAF uniforms are "Russian" blue is that the Czar ordered a huge amount of blue serge in 1917 for his Cossacks just before the Russian revolution - so it needed to find a home and was going cheap!
After a cup of tea or coffee in the canteen, served by the guides, we went upstairs and into Guy Gibson's office, where his dog "Nigger" sits patiently under the desk waiting for his master to return.

On the wall is the Operations Board for the night of the Dams raid.

The guide explained that, in his opinion, Richard Todd was mis-cast in the Dam Busters film because he was a really nice chap and Guy Gibson was not. Gibson was very successful but a bit of a maverick and not very popular with many of the junior officers and NCOs. We guess that you don't get to be so successful in a job like that by being "Mr Nice Guy" (sorry for the pun - unintentional).
While we were there, a Red Arrows Hawk taxied by.

The Red Arrows team is currently in the USA, so this was a spare aircraft. It appears that the pilot might have to fly it over to the States and needed to get "current" on the Hawk, so needed to accumulate some hours flying it. Imagine being given a Hawk and just be told to go a fly around for a while to remember how to fly it. "Jammy Toe-Rag", said M.
The guide then took us step by step through the raid indicating on a large "Role of Honour" board, the attack, and the fate of each aircraft in turn. Very humbling to see the number of those who did not survive the night and even more so to realise that only half the survivors of that night lived to the end of the war.
Downstairs in the hangar, is a "surplus" Hawk that we could climb into. For a fast jet fighter trainer, it is very basic and they are all beginning to show their age. The Red Arrows first started using them in 1979, 40 years ago.

M also managed to shoehorn herself in and even maintain her dignity (the guide said that he wouldn't look and went off somewhere else!). The cockpit is very cramped.

Next to this Hawk was a rather sorry looking Folland Gnat, which the Red Arrows used before the Hawk. The Gnat is one of R's favourite aircraft - so small that you could almost fit it into a double garage with its 22ft (6.7m) wingspan.

Outside is one of the original "Up Keep" bouncing bombs. This one was recovered from the sea after one of the early tests. It is frightening to think of something weighing 6,600lbs (3,000kg) spinning at 500 rpm in an aircraft. The vibration and the gyroscopic effects must have been extreme.

Close to that and just outside Guy Gibson's first floor office, is the grave of his black labrador dog "Nigger" who was killed outside the main gate the night before the raid. Gibson insisted that his death be kept a secret until after the raid and asked his WREN driver to bury the dog at a quarter past midnight, when Gibson would be making his attack on the Mohne Dam.

A fascinating tour which took over three hours during which time the guide hardly drew breath. He was full of information on the RAF, Scampton airfield, the Dams Raid and the history of 617 squadron.
After the tour, our guide who was a retired fireman, very kindly offered to drive us back into Lincoln. A very welcome offer as the bus service only ran every two hours and we had just missed one.
We rewarded ourselves with some tea and cake at the tea shop at the top of Steep Hill before returning to MM.