Guy Gibson - Return To Operations

Return To Operations

Gibson returned to operational duties in 1944 after pestering Bomber Command. After attending Staff College, he was first posted to understudy the Base Air Staff Office (BASO) at 55 Base, RAF East Kirkby before taking up his posting as BASO at 54 Base, RAF Coningsby. On 19 September 1944 he appointed himself as a Master Bomber on that night's raid on Rheydt (nowadays a borough of Mönchengladbach). He did not have a regular navigator and Sqn Ldr Jim Warwick DFC flew with him as his navigator on this raid. They flew from RAF Woodhall Spa, a satellite airfield of RAF Coningsby, in a de Havilland Mosquito XX, KB267, of 627 Squadron. Gibson helped to control the raid, but on their return, they crashed near Steenbergen, the Netherlands. He was 26 years old. On the morning of Gibson's fatal crash, he had been allocated a plane with the serial numbers ending in `13`. He was unhappy believing it to be unlucky, so he commandeered another Squadron aircraft. The aircraft's normal Navigator was Brian Harris.

It had been assumed for many years that he had been shot down, but following the discovery of the wreckage of his plane, it was suggested that a fault with the fuel tank selector had meant that the aircraft had simply run out of fuel. An eye-witness account detailed how his aircraft circled Steenbergen in the Netherlands, and then heard its engines 'splutter and stop'.

In October 2011 however, the Daily Mail featured an article stating that the cause of Gibson's death was a friendly fire incident: Sergeant Bernard McCormack (a rear air gunner in a Lancaster bomber) was in the vicinity of Steenbergen when he mistook Gibson's Mosquito for a similarly-profiled Ju 88 and fired 600 rounds, shooting it down. McCormack died in 1992 but, racked with guilt, had given his wife a taped confession before he died, which was passed to researcher James Cutler. Cutler had previously unearthed a report in the National Archives by the crew of the Lancaster describing the incident. He declared himself "satisfied 100 percent" that Guy Gibson was killed by friendly fire and 99.9 percent sure that he was shot down by McCormack's Lancaster. In later life McCormack became the mayor of Holyhead in north Wales.