Leonard George Weller

Leonard George Weller was born on 1 September 1915 in Edmonton, north London, and worked as a toolmaker before joining the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve in 1940; by then he was already married, and he and his wife Dorothy had an infant daughter. Trained as a wireless operator/air gunner, he was posted to No. 106 Squadron early in 1943, where he joined the crew captained by Pilot Officer Lewis Burpee, flying his first operation with them on a long night raid to Milan in February. When Burpee’s crew transferred to the newly formed No. 617 Squadron at Scampton, Weller, by then commissioned as a pilot officer, went with them as wireless operator. On the night of 16/17 May 1943 they flew Lancaster ED865, coded AJ-S, as part of the third wave of Operation Chastise, the attack on the German dams; crossing the Netherlands their aircraft was caught by searchlights and anti-aircraft fire and crashed and exploded on the edge of Gilze-Rijen airfield in the early hours of 17 May, killing all seven men aboard. Weller, who was 28, was one of three of the crew whose bodies the Germans could identify, and he was first buried at Prinsenhage before being reburied after the war at Bergen-op-Zoom War Cemetery in the Netherlands, where he lies in grave 27.A.6.