Dennis John Dean Powell

Dennis John Dean Powell was born in Birmingham on 21 January 1922, the son of Easton Walter Powell, a Canadian, and Ada Winifred Powell; the family later settled in Sidcup, Kent. He joined the Royal Air Force as a boy entrant before the war and served on the ground before retraining as a flight engineer in 1942, after which he was posted to No. 49 Squadron and crewed up with the pilot Bill Townsend. The two men flew fifteen operations together before transferring to the newly formed No. 617 Squadron in March 1943, and on the night of the Dams Raid, 16/17 May 1943, Powell served as flight engineer aboard Townsend’s Lancaster ED886, AJ-O, which attacked the Ennepe Dam in the operation’s third wave; their mine was dropped but did not breach the dam, and Powell was the only member of the crew not decorated afterwards. Following the squadron’s summer operations he moved to the crew of the new commanding officer, Wing Commander George Holden, and was flying as Holden’s flight engineer on the low-level attack against the Dortmund–Ems Canal on the night of 15/16 September 1943. Holden’s Lancaster was hit by flak and shot down near Nordhorn, and all on board, including Powell, were killed; it was the first of several aircraft the squadron lost on that disastrous night. He was 21 years old, and is buried in Reichswald Forest War Cemetery in Germany alongside other members of Holden’s crew.