John William Minchin

John William Minchin was born on 29 November 1915 in Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, the third of six sons of a local baker, and was British. He joined the RAF in the early part of the war and, having trained as a wireless operator/air gunner, was posted to No. 49 Squadron at Scampton in October 1941, completing a full operational tour on Hampdens and Manchesters before a spell at a training unit. In the spring of 1943 he returned to Scampton to join the newly formed No. 617 Squadron and was crewed with Flight Lieutenant John “Hoppy” Hopgood, flying as wireless operator aboard Lancaster ED925, coded AJ-M, in the first wave sent against the Möhne Dam on the night of 16/17 May 1943 during Operation Chastise. The aircraft was badly hit by anti-aircraft fire on the approach, and Minchin, his leg almost severed by the flak, remained at his radio set for nearly an hour before the target was reached. With the Lancaster mortally damaged after its attacking run, the rear gunner Tony Burcher clipped on Minchin’s parachute and pushed him from the doomed aircraft, but the gravely wounded airman did not survive the descent; his body was found some distance from the wreckage. Sergeant Minchin, who was 27, is buried in Rheinberg War Cemetery in Germany alongside fellow crew members Hopgood, Brennan, Earnshaw and Gregory, and is also remembered on the Bourton-on-the-Water war memorial.