Ronald Marsden

Ronald Marsden was born on 8 May 1920 in Scarborough, Yorkshire, one of the five children of William and Emily Marsden, and grew up in Stockton-on-Tees. He joined the RAF as a boy apprentice at Halton in 1935 and served for several years as ground crew before retraining, qualifying as a flight engineer at St Athan in September 1942. Posted to No. 207 Squadron, he flew some twenty operations as flight engineer in the crew of Pilot Officer Warner “Bill” Ottley, and when Ottley was selected for the newly formed No. 617 Squadron in the spring of 1943 Marsden, by then a sergeant, went with him. On the night of 16/17 May 1943 the Ottley crew flew Avro Lancaster ED910/G, coded AJ-C, as part of the mobile reserve in Operation Chastise, the attack on the German dams. Heading inland towards a reserve target, the aircraft was hit by flak and crashed near Hamm in the early hours of 17 May; Marsden and five of his crewmates were killed, only the rear gunner surviving as a prisoner of war. Originally buried by the Germans at Hamm, Ronald Marsden was reinterred after the war in Reichswald Forest War Cemetery in Germany, where he rests in grave 31. F. 10.