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Squadron Leader Larry Curtis: Signals leader of 617 Squadron
A wireless operator and subsequently signals leader of 617 Squadron, Larry Curtis flew on some of its most celebrated raids of the post-Dams Raid era, including attacks on V-weapons sites, U-boat pens, and the battleship Tirpitz, both when 617 crippled her in Altenfjord in September 1944, and when she was sunk at Tromsøfjord that November.
In a period of operations with 617 that lasted from July 1943 to November 1944, Curtis flew as wireless operator with some of the squadron’s most celebrated pilots, including Leonard Cheshire, “Micky” Martin, “Willie” Tait, David Shannon and the American Joe McCarthy. By the end of the war he had flown some 90 sorties in an operational career that had begun on Wellingtons in 1940, and had been awarded the DFC and Bar.
Lawrence Wesley Curtis was born in 1921 at Wednesbury and worked as a clerk at the Dudley branch of the Midland Counties Mutual Benefit Society after leaving school.
In October 1939 he joined the RAFVR, trained as a wireless operator/air gunner and flew sorties in Wellingtons that included hazardous attacks on the battlecruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in their heavily defended lair at Brest on the Atlantic coast.
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A “rest” from operations with a training unit proved to be nothing of the sort, since Bomber Command’s dynamic chief, Sir Arthur Harris, was soon requisitioning every available aircraft to make up the magical number for his “1,000-bomber” raids. Curtis found himself teamed up with Flight Lieutenant Nick Ross (obituary, June 23, 2008 ) as his wireless operator, on the first of these, over Cologne on May 31, 1942. Their paths were to cross again on 617 Squadron.
Commissioned in January 1943, he was next operational with 158 (Halifax) Squadron, with which he flew on raids on some of the most important industrial targets in Germany: the Ruhr, Berlin, Stuttgart and Kiel. Finally, in July 1943 he joined 617, two months after its dambusting exploit. In September he was made the squadron signals leader.
He was first crewed with Flight Lieutenant “Micky” Martin (later to become Air Marshal Sir Harold Martin, obituary, November 4, 1988), one of the squadron’s low-flying experts. There were to be some tough times ahead, with heavy casualties suffered in a low-level attempt to breach the strategically important Dortmund-Ems canal, and several efforts to knock down the Antheor viaduct on the Franco-Italian border in an attempt to stop German rail reinforcements reaching the Anzio beachhead. On the last of these, on February 12, 1944, one of the flak guns on the viaduct smashed through the Lancaster’s nose, killing the bomb aimer and damaging the engines. For the next few hours Curtis was busy on the radio searching for likely friendly airfields where the stricken bomber might land. He eventually fixed on Elmas Field, a US base on Sardinia, where Martin eventually brought her safely down.
With Martin rested from operations, Curtis flew with a number of pilots, including Dave Shannon, a Dams Raid veteran (obituary April 16, 1993) in the era when 617’s precision bombing tactics were evolving under the command of Leonard Cheshire (obituary, August 3, 1992). These included the D-Day deception plan Operation Taxable, in which waves of aircraft dropped “window” — metal foil chaff — on an advancing front which made it appear to German radar that an invasion fleet was heading in towards the Pas de Calais, rather than the Normandy beaches. So successful was the ruse that coastal guns actually opened fire on this phantom fleet.
Other sorties included the destruction of the Saumur tunnel for which 617 used Barnes Wallis’s “Tallboy” 12,000lb deep penetration bombs for the first time. This remarkable precision operation, carried out two days after D-Day, completely blocked a vital railway line and prevented strong Panzer units, on their way up from Bordeaux to the Normandy beachhead, from getting there in time to influence events. The citation for Curtis’s second DFC noted his “exemplary conduct in the face of the enemy”, an acknowledgement that all such bomber sorties were carried out in the face of well co-ordinated flak defences.
After the sinking of the Tirpitz on November 12, 1944, an operation led by Group Captain Willie Tait (obituary September 13, 2007 ), Curtis was rested from operations, after a career in the front line that was remarkably long by wartime standards. He finished his war in Transport Command, and was demobilised as a squadron leader in 1946.
After the war he went to Leeds University to study wool textiles and then entered the Yorkshire wool trade, founding Curtis (Wool) Holdings in Leeds. As its managing director, he developed the company as one of Europe’s largest processors and exporters of wool products. It won a Queen’s Award for Export Achivement in 1983.
Curtis is survived by his wife Barbara, whom he married shortly after VE Day, and by his three sons who joined him in the business.
Squadron Leader Larry Curtis, DFC and Bar, wartime wireless operator, was born on May 10, 1921. He died on June 21, 2008, aged 87