Dam Busters hero remembered

Henry Maudslay DFC was a hero of the Dam Busters raid of 1943. At the time, his family lived at Foxhill Manor (then called Furzehill Manor) on Farncombe Estate near Broadway in Worcestershire. This autumn [October] the current owners of Farncombe have completed a £3.5m Cotswold stone bedroom courtyard and named it in his memory.



Henry Eric Maudslay was born in Leamington Spa on July 21st 1921. War broke out while Henry was still at school and the young man volunteered for the RAF. In 1943, aged only 21, he was promoted to Squadron Leader and became B Flight Commander of the newly-formed 617 Squadron


This squadron – subsequently known as "The Dam Busters" - was formed for the single purpose of carrying out “Operation Chastise.” The object was to breach six German hydroelectric dams, causing flooding and disruption in the industrial Ruhr region. On the night of 16 May 1943, the top-secret attack was launched by nine specially-converted Lancaster bombers.


The Dam Buster raids were also famous for the deployment of the Bouncing Bomb, invented by English engineer Dr Barnes Wallis. Extreme precision was needed to drop cylindrical explosives into the face of each dam where they would “bounce” down before exploding.


A major difficulty for pilots was judging the critical release point 60 feet above water. Henry Maudslay is credited with the idea of two lamp beams converging below the fuselage at the right point. He demonstrated his Spotlight Altimeter Calibrator to his Wing Commander, Guy Gibson, and 617 Squadron were duly equipped with the lights.


As a result of the Dam Busters’ attack, the Mohne and Eder Dams were breached, causing catastrophic flooding of the Ruhr and Eder valleys. Of the nine aircraft involved, only five survived - one of them Henry Maudslay's. But on his flight back to England at around 2.30am on 17 May, Maudslay's plane was shot down close to the Dutch border. It burst into flames, with the loss of all the crew.


“We decided to name our new 32-bedroom courtyard in memory of this gifted, dedicated and brave young man,” says Farncombe Estate head of sales Nick Akerman. “We invited Victoria Trevelyan, Henry’s niece, to open the Maudslay Court and even numbered one of the bedrooms 617 to commemorate the 617 Squadron link. We were delighted that Wing Commander Keith Taylor, OC 617 Squadron, agreed to unveil a plaque in the room.”