Thomas Jaye

Sergeant Thomas Jaye, service number 1299446 of the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, was born on 3 October 1922 at Crook in County Durham, one of two sons of James and Helena Jaye, and was educated at Wolsingham Grammar School before working as an electrical engineer. He enlisted in the RAF in 1941 and trained as a navigator, including a spell at the Pan-American flying school in Miami before completing his conversion to heavy bombers at 1654 Conversion Unit at RAF Wigsley late in 1942. Crewing up with the Canadian pilot Lewis Burpee, he flew his first operation with him in January 1943 and became Burpee’s regular navigator, transferring with the crew to the newly formed No. 617 Squadron at the end of March 1943. On the night of 16/17 May 1943 he flew as navigator aboard Lancaster ED865, coded AJ-S, in the third wave of Operation Chastise, the attack on the German dams. Crossing the Netherlands, the aircraft strayed from its planned track near the heavily defended airfields at Gilze-Rijen and Eindhoven, was caught by searchlights and hit by anti-aircraft fire, and crashed at the edge of Gilze-Rijen airfield; all seven men aboard were killed. Jaye was 20 years old. He and his crewmates were first buried locally near Prinsenhage, and after the war their remains were reinterred at Bergen-op-Zoom War Cemetery in the Netherlands, where he rests in a collective grave.