Wilfred Ibbotson

Wilfred Ibbotson was born on 18 September 1913 in Netherton, near Wakefield in Yorkshire, the son of Herbert and Anne Ibbotson; after leaving school he worked on a farm, and in 1938 he married Doris Bray, with whom he had two daughters. Called up at the outbreak of war, he first served as an Army motorcycle despatch rider before volunteering for the RAF in 1941 and training as an air gunner, flying anti-submarine patrols from RAF St Eval and a pair of operations against Berlin before being selected for the newly formed No. 617 Squadron at RAF Scampton in the spring of 1943. On the night of the Dams Raid, 16/17 May 1943, Sergeant Ibbotson (service number 655431) flew as rear gunner in the first-wave Lancaster ED887, coded AJ-A, captained by Squadron Leader Henry Melvin “Dinghy” Young; theirs was the fourth aircraft to attack the Möhne Dam, and their accurately delivered Upkeep mine opened the breach that, with the following attack, brought the dam down. Homeward bound across the Dutch coast in the early hours of 17 May, AJ-A was hit by flak and crashed into the sea, killing Young and his entire crew. Ibbotson’s body was the last of the crew to be recovered, washed ashore on 30 May, and the following day he was buried alongside his comrades in Bergen General Cemetery in the Netherlands, where he lies in Plot 2, Row D, Grave 6. A blue plaque has since been approved in his home district to commemorate the Wakefield-born Dambuster.