Leonard Cheshire Author

Leonard Cheshire was one of the most highly decorated pilots of the Second World War, culminating in the award of the Victoria Cross. As the Royal Air Force’s youngest Group Captain in 1943, he took a drop in rank and went on to command No. 617 Squadron and pioneer low level marking and precision bombing. In 1945 he was an official observer of the dropping of the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Post-war his humanitarian work on behalf of the disabled resulted in the establishment of the Leonard Cheshire Foundation (now known as Leonard Cheshire), the world’s leading disability care charity. Dr Robert Owen is an aviation historian and the Official Historian of the No. 617 Squadron Association. A Trustee of both this Association and the Barnes Wallis Memorial Foundation, he has contributed to numerous publications and television documentaries, including authorship of the book Henry Maudslay Dam Buster. Dr Owen was also lead author on Dam Busters Failed to Return.