Dambuster ‘Benny’ Goodman piloted some of WWII’s most famous raids

Dambuster Lawrence Goodman dropped Barnes Wallis’s famous bouncing bombs – and he hit the Bismark’s deadly sister ship.

Lawrence Seymour Goodman was a British airman and bomber pilot, who served in World War II. He was the last surviving wartime pilot of the No. 617 Squadron RAF - the Dambusters.

OBITUARY

Lawrence “Benny” Goodman RAF pilot. Born London, September 24, 1920; died London, July 18, aged 100.

On his final mission of World War II, Lawrence Goodman hovered above Adolf Hitler’s alpine retreat with a 5500kg payload. For a Jewish Lancaster bomber pilot to destroy the Fuhrer’s mountain redoubt would have dealt a mighty symbolic blow. In the end the Eagle’s Nest was only slightly damaged yet the young RAF pilot noted that the SS barracks nearby “caught a packet”.

The flight lieutenant had already contributed to weakening the Nazi war effort in the course of 30 operational sorties for 617 Squadron: the elite unit made famous by the Dambusters raid on the Mohne and Eder dams in May 1943.

On March 19, 1945, his Lancaster carried the 10-tonne Grand Slam bomb designed by Barnes Wallis, the biggest non-nuclear conventional weapon of the war. It was dropped over the city of Arnsberg in northern Germany and scored a direct hit on the railway viaduct, strategically vital for transporting supplies from the Ruhr industrial region. Goodman was the first pilot without operational experience to be selected to join 617 Squadron, where pilots with exceptional flying skills were chosen to aid accuracy in precision bombing.

He showed all his skill in manoeuvring the four-engine bomber when it was weighed down with the Grand Slam. “It was slow in climbing, but we got to bombing height and got over the target (and) we didn’t have to say ‘bomb gone’ because the aircraft went up like a rocket.”

For his fourth mission on October 29, 1944, he was sent to destroy the German battleship Tirpitz. The sister ship of the Bismarck was considered one of the chief threats to Allied shipping; Winston Churchill called it “the Beast”.

Goodman piloted one of 27 Lancasters deep into enemy territory in Norway to drop 5500kg Tallboy deep-penetration bombs on Tirpitz while it was anchored in a fjord by Tromso, in the Arctic Circle, awaiting repairs. To take the weight of the bomb the aircraft were stripped of armour and gun emplacements, making them vulnerable to attack. The fuselage was filled with additional fuel tanks for the almost 14-hour round trip. Ground crew wore runners – any spark from their boots could have blown up an aircraft.

The Tirpitz was hit. It survived, but was sunk two weeks later in another Lancaster raid.

Waiting on the airfield in the dead of night to be given the green light to embark on such missions was the moment Goodman reflected on the dangers ahead.

“Once I got into the aircraft any nerves were gone,” he recalled. “I had the responsibility of flying the aircraft and doing it properly, so I got on with it.” Once up in the sky, the purr of the Merlin engines bred confidence. “Oh, the noise those beautiful engines made when you throttled back, there is no other sound in the world like it.”

Goodman’s father was a veteran of World War I and Goodman dropped out of an electrical engineering course to join his film and advertising business.

In September 1939, aged 18, he joined the RAF Volunteer Reserve and was selected for training as a pilot the following year. At his first air base he was detailed to patrol the airfield at night, challenging anyone he encountered to repeat that day’s password. He mostly received four-letter ones, followed by “off”.

He later trained in navigation, meteorology and airmanship, and as a pilot. Having been awarded his flying badge and commissioned as a pilot officer, he graduated to bigger aircraft and finally bombers.

Named “Benny” after the bandleader, on Goodman’s first operation to attack U-boats the wireless caught fire, the cabin filled with smoke and Goodman could not see the instruments. The crew jettisoned the wireless and the raid continued.

After bombing U-boat shelters at Hamburg on April 9, 1945, he noticed a Messerschmitt 262 jet fighter on his starboard side. Hopelessly outgunned and outpowered, Goodman thought his time was up. Inexplicably, the jet broke away into the dark sky. “We decided he had probably run out of ammunition and couldn’t shoot us down, so he had decided to give us a bloody good fright instead, which he did.”

Goodman was inspired by the Berlin Airlift to rejoin the RAF in 1949 and transported troops in the Middle East and returned injured Korean War personnel from Singapore.

He finally retired with the rank of squadron leader in 1964.

He held a private pilot’s licence until the age of 93 and flew a Piper Comanche into old age.

In 2016 he was awarded the Legion d’honneur.

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