Charles Walpole Roberts

Charles Walpole Roberts was born on 19 January 1921 at Northrepps, a village near Cromer in Norfolk, the only son of Charles Augustus and Dorcas Roberts, and was educated at the village school and then the Paston School. He joined the RAF in 1940 and was sent to Rhodesia to train as a pilot, but, like many aspiring pilots, was reclassified and qualified instead as a navigator. After crewing up and flying early operations from a training unit, he passed through a conversion unit and a posting to No. 57 Squadron before joining No. 617 Squadron on 25 March 1943, where he became navigator to Squadron Leader Henry Melvin “Dinghy” Young. On the night of the Dams Raid, Operation Chastise, on 16/17 May 1943, Roberts flew in Lancaster ED887, code AJ-A, as part of the first wave; theirs was the fourth aircraft to attack the Möhne Dam, and Roberts — one of the least experienced navigators on the raid — helped hold the formation steady to the target, where their mine fell accurately and added to the breaching of the dam. Returning across the Netherlands, AJ-A was hit by anti-aircraft fire near the Dutch coast and crashed into the sea, killing all seven men aboard. Roberts’s body was the first of the crew to be washed ashore, on 19 May 1943, and he was buried two days later in Bergen General Cemetery in the Netherlands, where his crew lie together.