Orders, Decorations and Medals

The emotive Second World War D.F.M. group of nine awarded to Flight Lieutenant A. F. Burcher, Royal Air Force, late Royal Australian Air Force, an Air Gunner and “Dambuster” who miraculously survived the loss of “Hoppy” Hopgood’s Lancaster when it was downed by flak over the Mohne Dam - baling out at 300 feet

Distinguished Flying Medal, G.VI.R. (A. 403182 Sgt. A. Burcher, R.A.A.F.); 1939-45 Star; Air Crew Europe Star; Defence and War Medals; Australia Service Medal 1939-45, these five officially engraved, ‘403182 Burcher, A. F.’; Korea 1950-53 (Flt. Lt., R.A.F.); U.N. Korea 1950-54; General Service 1918-62, 1 clasp, Malaya, E.II.R. (Flt. Lt., R.A.F.), together with a set of related miniature dress medals, mounted as worn, all official replacement issues, good very fine or better (18) £2500-3000

Burcher’s original D.F.M. was sold as a single award without campaign medals in these rooms on 17 September 2004 (Lot 1279).

D.F.M. London Gazette 20 April 1943. The original recommendation - signed by Guy Gibson - states:

‘Sergeant Burcher has completed a tour with 27 operational sorties, during which he has displayed the greatest enthusiasm and keenness. He has taken part in raids on German and Italian targets and mining sorties off France and in the Baltic, and flew as Rear-Gunner on the daylight raids on Danzig and Le Creusot. On 29 July 1942, his aircraft, returning from Saarbrucken, was attacked by five separate enemy fighters. Sound commentaries assisted his pilot to evade two of them, and his well-directed fire drove off another two and assisted in the certain destruction of the fifth. Sergeant Burcher, an Australian, has carried out his work with that cool courage and cheerfulness which well merits recognition.’

Anthony Fisher Burcher was born in Sydney in 1922 and joined the Royal Australian Air Force in 1940. After training in Canada, where he qualified as an Air Gunner, he was advanced to Sergeant in September 1941 and proceeded to the U.K. Then in May 1942, he joined No. 106 Squadron at Coningsby, a Manchester unit in the process of converting to Lancasters, and recently placed under the command of Guy Gibson. Burcher’s first operational sortie was against Essen on the night of 1-2 June, in fact the second of Bomber Command’s “Thousand Bomber Raids”, which target he re-visited at the end of the month. A further five sorties followed in July, including the daylight raid against Danzig, and strikes against Duisberg and Dusseldorf, but it was during a raid on Saarbrucken on the night of the 29th-30th that Burcher truly experienced his baptism of fire:

‘On the night of 20-30 July 1942, Lancaster “M” [with Burcher as Mid-Upper Gunner on this occasion] was attacked at 0052 hours, while flying at 10,000 feet, by a single engined aircraft. The enemy aircraft came in from the starboard quarter at the same height firing cannon from 500 yards. The Lancaster took evasive action losing height to 5,000 feet. The enemy aircraft was lost and our own aircraft did not return fire.

At 0117 hours, at 10,000 feet, 15 miles S.E. of Lille, Lancaster “M” was attacked by an unidentified aircraft. The enemy aircraft came in from the starboard beam, tracer passed ahead of the aircraft, and the Rear-Gunner and Mid-Upper Gunner returned fire. The enemy aircraft was then seen to pass from starboard to port a few feet below the Lancaster. The enemy aircraft was then lost.

Five minutes after leaving the target, approximately 20 miles west of Saarbrucken, at 0220 hours, at 5,000 feet, a single engined enemy aircraft was sighted by the Rear-Gunner of the Lancaster, dead astern at approximately 400 yards. It passed from astern to the port quarter and opened fire with cannon at about 200 yards. The Rear-Gunner returned fire and the fighter passed then from port to starboard, and as he did so tracer was seen to enter the enemy aircraft’s fuselage. The enemy aircraft then passed to the starboard beam to make another attack. The Mid-Upper Gunner gave instructions to the pilot to turn to starboard into the attack, and as the pilot did so the enemy aircraft closed in on the starboard beam to 150 yards and the Mid-Upper Gunner opened fire and tracer was seen to enter the engine and fuselage. The enemy aircraft then broke into flames and dived to the ground. It was seen to crash by the Observer, Mid-Upper and Rear Gunners. The pilot also saw it burning on the ground. The enemy aircraft was claimed as definitely destroyed.

At 0245 hours, near Boulay, while flying at 7,500 feet, the Lancaster was shadowed for 10 minutes by two unidentified aircraft. One on the starboard beam that did not open fire, and one astern that opened fire from 600 yards. The pilot took evasive action and both aircraft were lost.’

So states the relevant combat report, Burcher’s cool commentary and accurate fire no doubt being noted by fellow squadron members - small wonder then that Gibson would later select him to join his exclusive club of hardened veterans in No. 617 Squadron.

Meanwhile, Burcher flew six more sorties in August, including strikes against Duisberg, Dusseldorf and Mainz; five more in September, including two more strikes on Bremen; five in October, including the famous daylight attack on Le Creusot, and three in November, including Hamburg - he was recommended for the D.F.M., a tardy recommendation signed by Guy Gibson in February 1943, shortly before his departure to assume command of No. 617 at Scampton - he had, of course, in the interim, been kept busy with his new brief:

“Operation Chastise”

Burcher, who had been commissioned as a Pilot Officer in November 1942, duly arrived at Scampton, and was appointed Rear-Gunner in Flight Lieutenant J. V. “Hoppy” Hopgood’s crew - a close friend of Gibson and another ex-106 Squadron hand. And so to events of the 16-17 May 1943, when Hopgood piloted Lancaster 111 ED. 925G, “M-for-Mother”, on 617’s epic Dams Raid.

Together with Guy Gibson’s Lancaster and the third aircraft in the leading section of the first wave, Hopgood’s Lancaster was caught by searchlights as it crossed the Dutch coast but evaded by violent action which took it under high tension cables. Hopgood, having apologised for the unscheduled manoeuvre, climbed rapidly and ordered Burcher to keep his eyes peeled. Moments later there were more searchlights and Burcher opened up firing tracer from his four guns. In the next instant the Lancaster was raked from nose to tail by ground fire and Burcher was hit in the groin and stomach by shell splinters. His fire extinguished the searchlights but then a shell burst alongside his turret. The aircraft swung wildly and the Flight Engineer announced that the port outer engine was on fire. Burcher tried to rotate his turret but nothing happened. Hopgood, who had been wounded in the head, regained control, feathered the port outer, and called up the crew to discover the Wireless Operator had been hit in the leg and that there was no answer from the front turret. Amazingly, “M-for-Mother” nevertheless pressed on towards the Mohne Dam.

Once assembled over the target, Gibson made the first attack, his bomb being released at 00.28 a.m. A short while later, when the water had subsided from the terrific explosion, he ordered Hopgood into the attack:

‘Burcher heard the shout from navigator Ken Earnshaw to “Go lower, still lower!” He then heard “Bomb gone!” from Fraser. Just at that moment there was a terrific crash and Burcher saw flames streaming past his turret on the port side’ (Alan Cooper’s The Men Who Breached The Dams refers).

With his port inner engine hit by flak and ablaze, Hopgood made a gallant attempt to gain height so that his crew might bale out. Burcher, meanwhile, desperately hand-cranked his slowly turning turret to the fore and aft position in order to reach his parachute stowed in the fuselage. He then plugged in his intercom and shouted to Hopgood, who, having managed some 300 feet, ordered him to jump. “M-for-Mother’s” bomb meantime had bounced clean over the dam wall and completely destroyed the power house below. Inside the blazing Lancaster, Burcher assisted the severely wounded Wireless Operator with his parachute and pushed him out into the darkness, pulling the D-ring release as he did so. The Men Who Breached The Dams continues:

‘Burcher then pulled his own release while still in the aircraft. He knew it was not in the text books, but at this height he felt it was his only chance. Bundling it under his arm he plugged in the intercom for the last time. “Rear-Gunner abandoning aircraft,” he yelled ... At that moment there was a terrific bang and a great rush of air. The flames had reached the main wing fuel tank. Burcher was blown out and smashed into the tailplane so violently that he broke his back ... He landed with a terrific thud, which was only to be expected at such a low height. As he hit, the parachute billowed and took him back up again and it was this, a German Medical Officer said later, that saved him.’

Originally posted missing along with the rest of Hopgood’s crew, Burcher’s survival was communicated to R.A.A.F. authorities by his W.A.A.F. fiancée to whom he sent a Prisoner of War card from Stalag Luft 111 at Sagan:

‘I have quite recovered and am being well treated. Unfortunately the rest of the crew were killed and so far it seems I am the only survivor ... Please write to the next-of-kin of the other members of the crew telling them that the boys had a decent burial’.

In fact, as it later transpired, the Bomb-Aimer, Pilot Officer J. W. Fraser, also survived.

Burcher was liberated by the advancing Allies in May 1945 and returned to Australia in January 1946, where he remained employed in the R.A.A.F. until transferring to the R.A.F. as a Flight Lieutenant in 1952, in which rank he witnessed further active service in Korea and Malaya.

In 1955, he attended the premiere of the film “The Dam Busters”, where he was able to tell Barnes Wallis that “M-for-Mother’s” bomb had been responsible for the destruction of the Mohne Dam’s power house, and that a German engineer whom he had met recently told him that this had caused great problems until rebuilt in 1953. Barnes Wallis’s reply was that he had tried to get the R.A.F. to bomb it from normal bombing levels since 1941 but that they had refused, and so the concept of the bouncing bomb came to be born.

Sold with a quantity of original documentation, including two of the recipient’s Flying Log Books, comprising an R.A.A.F. Observer’s, Air Gunner’s and W./T. Operator’s (Form A. 72) type, with entries covering the period April 1949 to December 1951, and an R.A.F. Observer’s and Air Gunner’s (Form 1767) type, with entries covering the period May 1953 to November 1955, including service as a Signaller in Sunderlands of No. 205 Squadron in Malaysia, and ending with a tour in Valiants of No. 207 Squadron; his R.A.A.F. Officer’s Certificate of Service, dated 30 July 1952; career photographs (4); a programme for the ‘Repeat World Premiere’ of the “Dam Busters” film, 17 May 1955, together with a selection of promotional photographs taken on the set of the film (copyright Pathe Films); and an assortment of newspaper cuttings, including a feature on the raid run by the Sunday Express in the late 1950s.