- John Bell joined 617 Squadron with his pilot in 1944 after the famous attack
- They were involved in several daring missions prior to the D-Day landings
The last surviving member of the wartime ‘Dambusters’ squad has died, just a week before he was due to celebrate his 101st birthday.
Wing Commander John Bell was a bomb aimer during the Second World War and attached to 617 Squadron, which was one of the most elite bomber crews.
Bell, who did not fly on the squadron’s most famous mission, was an extremely important member of the unit later in the war.
His squadron was ‘withdrawn’ a month before D-Day so that they could train for a critically important mission that would convince the Germans that the invasion would take place further south along the French coast at Calais rather than Normandy.
In Operation Taxable, the squadron intermittently dropped bundles of aluminum foil – known as ‘windows’ over the sea between Newhavan and Cap d’Antifer – to convince German radar stations that the invasion fleet was heading for a point further along the French coast – paving the way for the D-Day landings in Normandy.
Wing Commander John Bell was a bomb aimer during the Second World War and attached to 617 Squadron, which was one of the most elite bomber crews.
Bell, second from the right in the photo, was too tall at 6 feet 4 inches to be trained as a pilot, but became a bomb aimer instead
Wing Commander Bell, pictured, served in the RAF until his retirement in the 1970s
Following that highly successful mission, the squadron was tasked with more conventional, yet highly skilled tasks, such as attacking a vital railway tunnel at Saumur, south-west of Paris.
The squadron was equipped with Barnes Wallis’s latest invention, the 12,000-pound deep-penetration ‘Tallboy’ bomb.
Barnes Wallis was the genius who invented the bouncy bomb used to such devastating effect during the Dam Busters attack.
The attack on the railway junction severely limited the Germans’ ability to send more troops to defend Normandy, aiding the Allied invasion of Europe.
Later, Bell used the ‘Tallboy’ bomb to great effect in attacking a V2 rocket site about to become operational outside Calais.
He released 12,000 pounds of ammunition at the Wizernes site, Pas de Calais, on July 17.
The impact destroyed part of the quarry where the missiles were to be released.
Two months later, in August 1944, after completing 50 missions, he was rested after being awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross.
At the start of the war, Bell, who was too young to serve in the army, worked for an accountancy firm in the City of London, but later volunteered for the Home Guard.
At 6ft 6in, he was considered too tall to train as a pilot when he joined the RAF at the age of 18. Instead, he was trained as an observer in South Africa.
He began his RAF career in 1943 flying with pilot Bob Knights where they attacked targets in Hamburg, Essen and eight times to Berlin.
His crew joined the Dambusters squadron in January 1944, ahead of the D-Day landings.
After the war he was involved in the 1947 Berlin Airlift and later worked in intelligence, retiring from the RAF in 1977.