Moose Jaw Dambuster veteran honoured in Germany

On May 17 a memorial honouring Flying Officer Robert ‘Turk’ Urquhart, DFC, RCAF of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and the crew of Lancaster Bomber AJ-Z, ED937 of 617 (Dambuster) Squadron, RAF, was unveiled at Emmerich am Rhein, Germany. The community is in North West Germany on the Dutch border.

F/O Urquhart, J/9763, navigator; his pilot, Squadron Leader Henry Maudslay and entire crew of AJ-Z were killed at 02:35, May 17, 1943. They were shot down returning from the Dambuster Raid on the Eder Dam in Germany.

The objective of the Dambuster Raid was to drop ‘bouncing bombs’ and blow-up three German dams. Three Moose Jaw and district men were involved in the operation. They were Robert Urquhart, navigator in AJ-Z; and Ken Brown, pilot, and bomb aimer Stefan Oancia for Limerick (Stonehenge) in AJ-F. Brown and Oancia survived the raid and the war.

Urquhart was in the second Lancaster to attack the Eder Dam. They had seven seconds to fly over the dam reservoir, drop to 60 feet, slow to 245 mph and drop the spinning 5,000-pound bomb 300 yards from the target.

Lancaster AJ-Z dropped its bomb too late. It struck the upper part of the dam and exploded damaging the aircraft. Pilot Maudslay nursed the Lancaster back toward England, flying at 50 feet. Unfortunately, they clipped electrical transmission lines, sustained more damage and strayed over defended oil facilities at Emmerich am Rhein and were shot down. The crash killed all on board.

The crew are buried in the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery, Germany after the war.

Lancaster AJ-Z was the last of the Dambuster crashed Lancaster Bombers to have its crash site identified. The memorial was made possible by the dedication of German war historian Marcel Hahn and British aviation historian Mark Welch.

On hand at the ceremony at Emmerich am Rhein was British historian Simon Muggleton who owns F/O Urquhart’s Logbook, the only Logbook of a crewmember of AJ-Z known to exist. Simon made the logbook available to those present. 

Also in attendance was German Flak Gunner Johannes Doerwald who, at age 16, was part of the gun crew that shot down AJ-Z. 

A collage of the crew — Henry Maudslay, Jack Marriott, Robert Urquhart (Canadian), Alden Cottam (Canadian), John Fuller, William Tytherleigh and Norman Burrows — was on display.