Robert Edward George Hutchison

Robert Edward George Hutchison was born in Liverpool on 26 April 1918, the son of Robert and Ada Hutchison; he won a scholarship to the Liverpool Institute and worked in the accountant’s department of the Mersey Docks and Harbour Board before the war. He joined the RAF after the outbreak of war and trained as a wireless operator/air gunner, being posted to No. 106 Squadron at the end of 1941, where in time he became the regular wireless operator in the crew of Wing Commander Guy Gibson and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. When Gibson formed the new No. 617 Squadron in March 1943 Hutchison followed him to it, serving as the squadron’s senior wireless operator and Signals Leader, and on the night of 16/17 May 1943 he flew as wireless operator in Gibson’s Lancaster ED932 (AJ-G) on Operation Chastise, the Dams Raid, for which he received a Bar to his DFC. He survived that operation but was killed four months later, on the night of 15/16 September 1943, flying as wireless operator in the crew of the squadron’s new commanding officer, Wing Commander George Holden, during the costly low-level attack on the Dortmund–Ems Canal. Holden’s Lancaster, EE144 (AJ-S), was hit by light flak as it passed over the German town of Nordhorn and crashed with the loss of the entire crew, several of them — like Hutchison — veterans of the Dams Raid. Flight Lieutenant Hutchison, aged 25, is buried alongside his crew in Reichswald Forest War Cemetery in Germany.