Joseph Gordon Brady

Joseph Gordon Brady, known to his family as Gordon, was born on 16 April 1916 in the small town of Ponoka, Alberta, the Canadian-born son of naturalised parents of American origin. He worked in a drug store before the war and had served as a field-ambulance truck driver, then volunteered for the Royal Canadian Air Force in March 1941; trained as an air gunner, he reached Britain in 1942 and was posted to 16 Operational Training Unit at Upper Heyford in June, where he joined the crew of pilot Lewis Burpee and went on to fly with him on every one of his operations, rising to flight sergeant and then warrant officer. When Burpee was selected for the newly formed 617 Squadron in the spring of 1943, Brady went with him as the crew’s rear gunner. On the night of the Dams Raid, 16/17 May 1943, they flew as part of the third wave in Lancaster ED865, coded AJ-S; while crossing the Netherlands the aircraft strayed off course near the airfields at Gilze-Rijen and Eindhoven, was caught in searchlights and hit by flak, and crashed in flames on the edge of Gilze-Rijen airfield, its mine exploding on impact and killing all seven men aboard. Brady was one of only a few of the crew positively identified at the time, having been thrown clear of his rear turret. Initially buried by the Germans near Breda, he was reburied after the war at Bergen-op-Zoom War Cemetery in the Netherlands, where he lies with his crewmates.