Jack Guterman

Jack Guterman was born in Ramsgate, Kent, on 1 August 1920, the son of an accountant of Polish-Jewish descent who had served on the Western Front in the Great War; before the war Jack worked in his father’s accountancy practice and was a talented amateur painter who carried his paints and drawings from posting to posting. He volunteered for the Royal Air Force, trained as a wireless operator/air gunner, and completed his training in the autumn of 1941, joining No. 207 Squadron in February 1942 and flying operationally from that June. Having finished a tour of operations — for which he was recommended for the Distinguished Flying Medal — he chose to remain with his former 207 Squadron pilot Warner “Bill” Ottley, a close friend with whom he shared a love of classical music, and was posted with Ottley’s crew to the newly formed No. 617 Squadron at RAF Scampton. On the night of 16/17 May 1943 he flew as wireless operator aboard Lancaster ED910, coded AJ-C, in the third wave of Operation Chastise, the attack on the German dams. While being directed onward to the Lister Dam in the early hours of 17 May, the aircraft was caught by light flak and crashed in flames at Heessen, a few kilometres north-east of Hamm; Guterman and all the crew except the rear gunner, Fred Tees, were killed. He was awarded the DFM posthumously, and after being buried by the Germans near Hamm he was reinterred after the war in Reichswald Forest War Cemetery.