Leonard Cheshire

Commander of No. 617 Squadron RAF, holder of the Victoria Cross and later the founder of an international network of homes for disabled people. Born on 7 September 1917 in Chester. He flew from 1940 with Nos. 102, 35 and 76 Squadrons, commanded No. 76 and, from 1943, No. 617 Squadron — the unit that had carried out the raid on the German dams. He developed and introduced low-level target marking: instead of marking from height he ran in on the target at minimum altitude to mark it for the bombers following behind. The method sharply improved accuracy and was used against targets in France and Germany. His Victoria Cross was gazetted on 8 September 1944. The award is unusual in being made not for a single act but for four years of sustained operational courage over some hundred missions — a form of citation rare among holders of the Cross. On 9 August 1945 he was the official British observer at the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. What he saw there shaped the rest of his life. In 1948 he founded the first home for the incurably ill and severely disabled; the network grew into an international organisation, today Leonard Cheshire. He died on 31 July 1992.