Alan Gillespie

Alan Gillespie was born on 16 November 1922 at Hesket, in what was then Westmorland, the son of a railway porter, and was British. He was educated at Long Marton village school and Appleby Grammar School and was working as a clerk in a solicitor’s office when he volunteered for the Royal Air Force in 1940, going on to train as aircrew in Canada. He flew a first operational tour with No. 61 Squadron, completing thirty sorties against targets in Germany and Italy and being recommended for the Distinguished Flying Medal for his coolness under fire. When Flight Lieutenant Robert Barlow formed a crew for the newly raised No. 617 Squadron, he chose Gillespie as his bomb aimer, together with the flight engineer Samuel Leslie Whillis, who had trained alongside Barlow; Gillespie and Whillis were both commissioned only two days before the operation. On the night of 16/17 May 1943, during Operation Chastise, the Dams Raid, Gillespie flew in Lancaster ED927, coded AJ-E, as part of the second wave, but the aircraft struck high-tension electricity pylons near Haldern while crossing Germany at low level and crashed, killing all seven men aboard before they could reach their target. He was twenty years old; first buried at Düsseldorf, he was reinterred after the war at Reichswald Forest War Cemetery, and the DFM he had earned was presented posthumously to his family.