Jack Robert George Liddell

Jack Robert George Liddell was born on 22 June 1924 in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, the son of Robert and Winifred Liddell, and worked in the butchery trade before volunteering for the Royal Air Force in May 1941 while still only sixteen, having apparently overstated his age. After completing air gunner training in 1942 he joined No. 61 Squadron as a rear gunner in the crew of Flight Sergeant John Cockshott, with whom he flew a full tour of thirty operations. Posted briefly to instructional duties, he was recalled within a week to join the crew being formed by Flight Lieutenant Robert Norman George Barlow, which transferred to the newly raised No. 617 Squadron for the attack on the German dams. On the night of 16/17 May 1943, flying as rear gunner of Lancaster ED927 (AJ-E) in the second wave of Operation Chastise, Liddell was the youngest airman to take part in the raid, still short of his nineteenth birthday. Their aircraft struck high-tension cables and crashed at Haldern, north-east of Rees, shortly before midnight, killing all seven men aboard. Liddell and his crewmates were first buried by the Germans in Düsseldorf, and after the war he was reinterred in Reichswald Forest War Cemetery, where he holds the sad distinction of being the youngest of those killed on the Dams Raid.