Part of the Dambusters team. Killed in Action.

Times January 16th 2015

Dambuster gunner’s medals on sale

Simon de Bruxelles


Gallantry medals awarded to an RAF tail gunner who took part in the Dambusters raid are expected to fetch more than £60,000 at an auction in March.

Flight Lieutenant Richard Trevor-Roper’s Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) is believed to be the first Dambusters medal sold publicly for 15 years. Trevor-Roper was a rear gunner in the Lancaster flown by Wing Commander Guy Gibson, who led the operation to destroy three dams in the Ruhr valley, Germany’s industrial heartland, in May 1943.

The raiders dropped giant “bouncing bombs” that breached two of the dams and damaged the third, seriously disrupting the German armaments industry.

Gibson, who was awarded the Victoria Cross, had been allowed to hand-pick his crew and Trevor-Roper, who had flown 50 combat missions, was the most experienced tail gunner in 617 Squadron. After dropping his bomb, Gibson repeatedly returned to draw fire away from the other Lancasters while Trevor-Roper took aim with his twin 20mm cannon at German anti-aircraft guns. Gibson’s aircraft was riddled with bullet holes when it returned safely to RAF Scampton.

Of the 19 Lancaster bombers that took part in the mission, eight were shot down. Fifty-three crewmen were killed and three were taken prisoner of war.

Trevor-Roper was killed in a raid on Nuremberg in 1944. His medals, including the DFC and a Distinguished Flying Medal awarded in 1941, were kept in a box file and were recently rediscovered by his family, who have decided to sell them.

The sale, at Charterhouse auctioneers in Sherborne, Dorset, on March 19 includes Trevor-Roper’s RAF side cap, a script of the 1955 film The Dam Busters and photographs, among them one of the airman with Barnes Wallis, inventor of the bouncing bomb. The citation for Trevor-Roper’s DFC said his example was “an inspiration to all the other gunners in the squadron”.