Samuel Leslie Whillis

Samuel Leslie Whillis was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1912 and worked as a commercial traveller before joining the Royal Air Force shortly after the outbreak of war. He served on the ground until 1942, when he retrained as a flight engineer at No. 4 School of Technical Training at St Athan in South Wales, and after a spell at an Operational Training Unit and a heavy conversion flight he was posted to No. 61 Squadron in September 1942, flying his first operation, to Turin, that November. When his pilot, Flight Lieutenant Robert Norman George Barlow DFC, was selected for the new squadron forming at Scampton for the Dams Raid, Whillis went with him to No. 617 Squadron, and he was commissioned as a Pilot Officer only days before the operation. On the night of 16/17 May 1943 he flew as flight engineer aboard Lancaster ED927, coded AJ-E, one of the aircraft of the second wave dispatched against the Sorpe Dam. Crossing into Germany at low level, the Lancaster struck high-tension electricity cables near Haldern and crashed into farmland, and all seven men aboard were killed. Pilot Officer Whillis, aged 31, was the son of Charles and Edith Whillis and the husband of Gladys Winifred Whillis of Fenham, Newcastle; he is buried in Reichswald Forest War Cemetery in Germany, grave 5. C. 6.