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Squadron Leader Les Munro has died at age 96 in New Zealand. He was the last surviving pilot of the Dam Busters, a special unit flying modified Lancaster bombers with bombs designed to take out dams in Germany during World War II.
Munro had made headlines in recent months.
In March this year, Munro offered to sell his war medals to help fund the upkeep of a London memorial that honours his comrades.
However, British businessman Lord Ashcroft made a donation to the RAF Benevolent Fund; in return, Munro withdrew his medals from auction and gave them to the Museum of Transport and Technology (Motat) in Auckland.
The raid by the Dam Busters was a daring one-time exploit. Carried out at night, at low level on heavily defended targets, it called for precise piloting under very difficult conditions. The
details at wikipedia give an idea of how exacting the mission was - and why so few bombers returned to England from it. As it was, Munro's plane never made it to his target. It was hit by flak while over Holland on the way in, and the damage made it impossible for the plane to carry out the mission. Others were lost on the mission as well; only 77 crew returned out of the 133 who set out.
Those planes that made it to their targets encountered multiple difficulties: finding the dams at night, dealing with fog, having to make multiple attempts before getting everything right for bomb release - and not all of them were effective. The bomb had to be dropped at precisely 60 feet above the water at an exact distance from the dam while the Lancaster was flying at about 240 mph. The bombs - one to a plane, were large spinning cylinders. They were designed to skip across the water over defenses like torpedo nets, hit the back of the dam, and sink down to a depth where the bomb's explosion combined with the force of the water behind the dam would breach it.
According to BBC news reports, there are only two other surviving crew from the raid, "Canadian former front gunner Fred Sutherland and British former bomb aimer George Johnson."
The importance of the raid to the war effort may be debatable; what is not is the airmanship and bravery needed to execute it. The raid caught the public fancy, and inspired a movie. (There are a number of documentaries about it on Youtube if you want more.) As feats go, I'd put it in roughly the same league as the Doolittle Raid on Japan. By coincidence, the last surviving members of that raid are down to only two as well.