John Kinnear

John Kinnear was born on 6 November 1921 in Newport-on-Tay, Fife, the son of William and Helen Kinnear, and worked as a garage hand before joining the Royal Air Force in 1939. Known as “Jack” to his family and “Jock” in the service, he spent more than three years on ground crew before volunteering for aircrew duties, qualifying as a flight engineer after training at RAF St Athan in the summer of 1942. At a heavy conversion unit he became part of the crew that would later fly together on the Dams Raid, and after postings to 9 and 57 Squadrons the crew came under pilot Flight Lieutenant Bill Astell and joined the newly formed No. 617 Squadron at Scampton. On the night of 16/17 May 1943, Sergeant Kinnear flew as flight engineer of Lancaster ED864 (AJ-B) in the first wave of Operation Chastise, alongside Astell, navigator Floyd Wile, wireless operator Abram Garshowitz, bomb aimer Donald Hopkinson, and gunners Frank Garbas and Richard Bolitho. Their aircraft strayed slightly off the planned route on the outward flight and struck a high-tension electricity pylon near Marbeck, bursting into flames and crashing with the loss of the entire crew. He was 21 years old. First buried in the city cemetery at Borken, John Kinnear was reinterred after the war at Reichswald Forest War Cemetery in Germany, where he lies in grave 21.D.14 beneath the inscription “My race is run, my warfare’s o’er.”