Orders, Decorations and Medals

The campaign group of three awarded posthumously to Flight Sergeant C. Butterworth, No. 57 (Cheltenham’s Own) Squadron, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, who was killed in action in the famous Peenemunde Raid

1939-45 Star; Air Crew Europe Star; War Medal; together with named condolence slip and card box of issue addressed to his father at Stockport, Cheshire, extremely fine (3) £250-300

Flight Sergeant Cyril Butterworth failed to return from the attack made by six hundred aircraft of Bomber Command on the highly secret German research station of Peenemunde during the night of 17/18 August 1943. No. 57 Squadron provided 14 Lancasters for this raid of which just one failed to return. This plane was piloted by the Squadron’s Commanding Officer, Wing Commander W.R. Haskell, D.F.C, with Flight Sergeant Butterworth taking the roll of Second Pilot and Wireless Operator. A total of 41 allied planes of all Squadrons failed to return from this raid, the vast majority of whom fell prey to German night fighters over the Baltic Sea.

This raid was was of the most important and effective of the Second World War. The destruction of the workshops and administrative complex dealt a severe blow to the enemy’s advance in the field of rocket and pilotless aeroplane development; demolishing at a single blow their plans for a saturation onslaught calculated to destroy Great Britain’s will to continue to fight.