Norman Rupert Burrows

Norman Rupert Burrows was born on 31 August 1914 in Toxteth, Liverpool, the second of three children; before the war he worked as a silk-stocking machinist, reportedly at the Bear Brand factory in Woolton. He joined the Royal Air Force in June 1941 and, after training as an air gunner, was posted to No. 50 Squadron at Skellingthorpe on 30 September 1942, where he became the regular rear gunner in the crew of Squadron Leader Henry Maudslay, flying his first operation with him in a raid on Düsseldorf on 27 January 1943. When Maudslay’s crew was selected for the newly formed No. 617 Squadron, Burrows transferred with them on 27 March 1943 to train for the attack on the German dams. On the night of 16/17 May 1943, during Operation Chastise, he flew as rear gunner in Lancaster ED937 (code AJ-Z), which made the second attack on the Eder Dam; the Upkeep mine overshot the target and the aircraft was damaged. Struggling home, AJ-Z reached the area of Emmerich near the Dutch–German border, where it was hit and crashed, killing the entire crew. Burrows, who held the service number 1503094, was first buried in Düsseldorf and after the war was reinterred, with his crewmates, in Reichswald Forest War Cemetery in Germany.