James Lamb Arthur

James Lamb Arthur was a Canadian airman, born on 3 July 1917, the son of the Reverend Alfred John Arthur, an Anglican clergyman, and Dora Arthur, of Coldwater, Ontario. Before the war he worked at the Bank of Toronto, having shown a particular aptitude for mathematics at school, and he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941; first selected for pilot training, he was remustered as an observer, qualified in May 1942, and after reaching the United Kingdom trained as a bomb aimer on heavy bombers, joining No. 106 Squadron in early 1943. With very little operational experience behind him, he was posted to the newly formed No. 617 Squadron for Operation Chastise, the attack on the German dams, as bomb aimer in the crew of Pilot Officer Lewis Burpee DFM aboard Lancaster B.III ED865, coded AJ-S. Flying with the third wave on the night of 16/17 May 1943, the aircraft was hit by light flak as it crossed enemy territory and crashed in flames onto the German airfield at Gilze-Rijen in the Netherlands in the early hours of 17 May, killing all seven men aboard. Holding the rank of Warrant Officer Class II by the time of his death, James Arthur is buried with members of his crew in Bergen-op-Zoom War Cemetery, Netherlands.