Orders, Decorations and Medals

A fine Second World War Bomber Command group of six awarded to Flight Lieutenant R. L. Pinder, Royal Canadian Air Force, who completed around 45 operational sorties, half of them in No. 617 Squadron in 1944, including two of the famous strikes against the Tirpitz

1939-45 Star; Air Crew Europe Star, clasp, France and Germany; Defence Medal 1939-45, silver; Canadian Voluntary Service Medal, with Overseas clasp; War Medal 1939-45, silver; Canadian Forces Decoration, E.II.R. (F./L. R. L. Pinder), mounted as worn, together with an old set of tunic ribands and R.C.A.F. name brooch ‘pinder’, good very fine (6) £600-800

Robert Lloyd Pinder commenced his operational career with an appointment as a Navigator in No. 207 Squadron, a Lancaster unit operating out of Langar, Nottinghamshire, in September 1943, flying his first sortie - against Mannheim - on the night of 23rd. Two further trips followed in the same month, against Hanover and Bochum, his pilot on each occasion being Henry Pryor, D.F.C., with whom he remained until ending his operational career in December 1944.

In October the Squadron moved to Spilsby, Lincolnshire, and in the same month Pinder flew sorties against Hagen, Kassels, Stuttgart and Hanover, but between then and February 1944, with the exception of outings to Modane and Frankfurt, he was constantly employed in what became known as the Battle of Berlin, making no less than nine trips to the “Big City” between mid-November 1943 and mid-February 1944 - on one such sortie on the night of 22-23 November, his aircraft was attacked by a night fighter, which caused a fire in the bomb bay, but Pryor was able to coax their Lancaster back to Woodbridge for an emergency landing.

In mid-February 1944, pilot and Navigator were posted to No. 617 Squadron, at that stage under Leonard Cheshire’s command, and carried out a strike against the powder and explosives factory at Bergerac on 18 March - Cheshire was well pleased with 617’s effort, signalling base that ‘The powder works would appear to have outlived their usefulness.’ A brace of trips to the Berliet motor works near Lyons followed on the 25th and 29th, the latter attack proving decisive with all bombs inside the “white apron” - a white square marked on pre-sortie target maps. Then on 5 April, in an attack aganist the aircraft works at Toulouse, Cheshire for the first time used a Mosquito to mark the target - with devastating effect - and on the 10th, in an attack against the air park and signals centre at St. Cyr, Pryor and 617’s pilots bombed with equal success from 8,000 feet. The final target of the month was the marshalling yards at Juvisy, one eye-witness describing 617s work as ‘one of the finest examples of precision bombing’ he had ever seen.

Meanwhile, plans for 617’s role in the forthcoming D-Day operation were being finalised, and in May Pryor and Pinder took part in trials off Flamboro Head on the Yorkshire coast testing window with view to confusing enemy radar into picking up a “spoof landing”. In due course the plan was given the go ahead under the code-name “Taxable”, and on the night of 5-6 June, Pryor, Spinder, and fellow 617 aircrew flew a complicated series of window operations off the French coast, hoping to fool the Germans into a possible landing near Cap d’Antifer - the spoof worked, vital enemy resources being held up in the Pas de Calais area.

In July, as Cheshire’s tenure of command came to a close, 617 attacked the flying bomb storage dumps near Creil on the 4th, clearly a successfully accomplished mission - on visiting the ruins after the War, “Bomber” Harris asked a local French boy what was the cause of the awful smell - “There are 800 Boche trapped in there!” came the prompt reply. Cheshire marked with equal accuracy on the Squadron’s next V-weapon target at Minoyecques, a daylight raid in which ‘the sky became a nightmare of flak’, but this proved to be his penultimate operation, Air Vice-Marshal Cochrane grounding him and appointing Wing Commander “Willie” Tait in his stead. Trips to Wizernes quickly followed under the latter’s command on the 17th and 20th.

Then in August, Pryor and Pinder commenced a spate of operations against the heavily defended U-Boat pens at La Pallice and Brest, in addition to a brace of strikes against the ex-French naval vessel Gueydon anchored in the latter port - in fact no less than nine sorties in less than three weeks - and it was on one of these latter trips, on the 13th, that the flak found its mark on their Lancaster. Alan Cooper’s Beyond the Dams to the Tirpitz takes up the story:

‘Flight Lieutenant Pryor’s aircraft (LM485 ‘N’) was hit soon after his Canadian Bomb Aimer, Cecil Pesme, had dropped their bomb. A piece of shrapnel entered the nose compartment and hit Pesme in the throat as he was kneeling, watching the bomb go down. The piece of shrapnel went through his throat and into his head, killing him instantly. When Lloyd Pinder, the Navigator, went forward to check on him, he could feel the lump on top of his head where the shrapnel had lodged below his helmet.’

In September, 617 was tasked to destroy the Tirpitz, a remarkable sortie being flown from the Soviet airfield at Yagodnik, near Murmansk, on the 11th, and a further operation in October, Pinder being among the chosen aircrew on both occasions - and his aircraft was credited with at least one hit. Like Tait, Pinder flew just two more operations, both of them against the Urft Dam in December, but unlike his C.O., who was rightly recommended for a Victoria Cross, Pinder was denied even a mention in despatches, an extraordinary oversight for such a long and distinguished operational tour.

His post-war appoinntments in the R.C.A.F. included 412 and 436 Squadrons, following which he joined the commercial airline Wardair in May 1968. He remained similarly employed until retiring in April 1975, having flown Boeing 707s, 727s and 747s - and been a member of crew in in a record breaking non-stop commercial flight of nearly 14 hours duration from Honolulu to London in October 1972. He died in Toronto in January 2003.