Kenneth Earnshaw

Kenneth Earnshaw was born in Bridlington, Yorkshire, on 23 June 1918, but emigrated to Canada with his family as an infant and grew up on the prairies of Alberta, where he trained as a teacher and taught at the Whitebush School near Bashaw before enlisting in the Royal Canadian Air Force. Commissioned as a navigator, he came to England and in November 1942 joined No. 50 Squadron, flying a full tour of around thirty operations in the crew of pilot Norman Schofield, alongside the Canadian bomb aimer John Fraser, who became a close friend. When No. 617 Squadron was formed for the Dams Raid, Earnshaw and Fraser were posted in at the end of April 1943 to complete the crew of Flight Lieutenant John Hopgood, one of the most experienced and respected pilots on the squadron. On the night of 16/17 May 1943, during Operation Chastise, Earnshaw flew as navigator of Lancaster ED925/G, coded AJ-M, the second aircraft of the first wave to attack the Möhne Dam. Hopgood’s Lancaster was hit by anti-aircraft fire on its run in, the mine was released a fraction too late and bounced clean over the dam wall, and the badly damaged and burning bomber crashed in a field near Ostönnen a few kilometres beyond the target. Earnshaw was killed in the crash along with Hopgood and most of the crew, only two men surviving by parachute. He is buried at Rheinberg War Cemetery in Germany, where he lies among his fellow Dambusters.