I came across the story of Norman Burrows when reading Chastise,
the story of the Dambusters raid, by Max Hastings. He recounts one of the
low-level training flights made by the Lancaster commanded by Squadron Leader
Henry Maudslay: “As their bomb smashed into the waves, a rising mass of
water struck the Lancaster, ‘like a gigantic fist’, inflicting serious damage
on the tail, lower fuselage and elevators, and drenching the rear-gunner,
carter’s son Norman Burrows, fortunately a resilient young man from Liverpool’s
tough Toxteth district”.
Norman Burrows flew with Maudslay on the raid on the Eder
dam on the night of 16th-17th May 1943. They dropped
their ‘bouncing bomb’ but it overshot the target and caused considerable damage
to their aircraft. Struggling to return to England the Lancaster, Z-Zebra call
sign, was shot down near Emmerich on the Dutch-German border with all the crew
being killed. They were initially buried in Dusseldorf but were reinterred
after the war in the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery.
Trying to find out a little more about Burrows I was
surprised to find no reference to him in the local press, a search revealing
solely the death notice placed in the Liverpool Echo by his family. As
Hastings mentions, he was indeed born in Toxteth, the son of Norman Rupert
Burrows Snr. and his wife Jane Polly (née Jones). The family lived at 18
Pecksniff Street L8 (now demolished) but by the time Norman joined the RAF in
June 1941 they had moved to the leafy suburb of Allerton and a pleasant semi at
15 Storrsdale Road L18. Records show that in 1939 Norman’s occupation was ‘silk
stocking machinist’, very likely at the Bear Brand factory in Woolton.
After joining the RAF and training as a gunner, in late
September 1942 he was posted to 50 Squadron at Skellingthorpe, Lincolnshire.
His first flight with Maudslay was in January 1943 in a raid on Dusseldorf.
With the rest of the crew he was transferred to 617 Squadron, the newly-formed ‘Dambusters’
on 27th March 1943.
