On 12th November, I had the absolute honour and privilege of meeting the 97 year old Johnny Johnson and presenting him with a framed print of one of my photographs for his 98th birthday on 25th November 2019. Johnny is the Last Dambuster - the last surviving member of 617 Squadron to have flown on Operation Chastise on the night of 16-17 May 1943.
Led by the 24 year old Wing Commander Guy Gibson, nineteen Lancaster bombers took off from RAF Scampton for an audacious low-level attack on three German dams in the Ruhr valley, using Barnes Wallis's revolutionary 'Upkeep' bomb weighing over 9,000 lbs.
Johnny was the bomb aimer on T-Tommy and attacked the Sorpe dam. Of the nineteen aircraft to take part, eight crashed or were shot down and 53 aircrew from Johnny's squadron were killed.
Johnny is an honorary member of the 120 Squadron (CXX Squadron) Association - he served on CXX Squadron in the early post-war years.
To mark his 98th birthday on 25th November 2019, I am selling a limited edition of 120 framed photographs of the Lancaster 'Just Jane' taken at night at the former RAF East Kirkby. This is the same photograph that we gave Johnny for his birthday and is professionally framed in exactly the same way by Kaleidoscope Framing of Shrewsbury.
I will be donating 10% of all the proceeds from sales of this limited edition framed picture to the RAF Benevolent Fund.
