David Taylor Horsfall

David Taylor Horsfall was born on 16 April 1920 in Bramley, near Leeds in the West Riding of Yorkshire, the elder of the two sons of Robinson and Emma Horsfall; the family later moved to Barnsley, where he attended Barnsley Grammar School. He joined the Royal Air Force in 1936 as a boy entrant at the No. 1 School of Technical Training at RAF Halton, serving for several years in ground crew before retraining as a flight engineer on heavy bombers in 1942, after which he crewed up at No. 1660 Conversion Unit at RAF Swinderby late that year. His crew passed briefly through No. 57 Squadron before being posted on 25 March 1943 to the newly formed No. 617 Squadron at RAF Scampton, where they flew under Squadron Leader Henry Melvin “Dinghy” Young. On the night of 16/17 May 1943, Operation Chastise — the Dams Raid, and only Horsfall’s third operation — he served as flight engineer aboard Avro Lancaster ED887/G, coded AJ-A, which was the fourth aircraft to attack the Möhne Dam, dropping its Upkeep mine accurately and helping to open the breach that brought the dam down. Crossing the Dutch coast near Castricum-aan-Zee on the return flight, AJ-A was struck by anti-aircraft fire from a coastal flak battery and crashed into the sea in the early hours of 17 May, killing the entire crew of seven. Horsfall’s body was washed ashore on 29 May 1943, together with that of his pilot, and the two men were buried side by side in the General Cemetery at Bergen in the Netherlands. He was 23 years old, and his younger brother Albert, a navigator with No. 50 Squadron, had already been killed in 1940.