Arthur Neville Whitaker

Arthur Neville Whitaker was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, on 8 September 1909 and educated at Blackburn Grammar School, qualifying as a chartered accountant and working before the war for a musical instrument dealer in Blackpool. Already approaching thirty when war broke out, he served briefly in the army before transferring to the Royal Air Force and training as a bomb aimer, joining No. 467 Squadron late in 1942. There he was crewed with the Australian pilot Pilot Officer Vernon Byers, and on 28 March 1943 the whole crew was posted to the newly formed No. 617 Squadron to prepare for the special operation that became the Dams Raid. On the night of 16/17 May 1943 Whitaker flew as bomb aimer in Byers’s Lancaster ED934 (AJ-K), part of the second wave detailed to attack the Sorpe Dam, but theirs was the first aircraft lost on the operation — hit by flak as it crossed the Dutch coast near the island of Texel and brought down into the Waddenzee, with no survivors. His commission and promotion to Pilot Officer were confirmed only days after his death. Of the seven-man crew only the rear gunner’s body was recovered; Whitaker has no known grave and is commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial in Surrey.