Squadron Leader Montgomery Gibbon was the pilot of Lancaster Bomber PD268 that was sent out on a mission to Dessau in Eastern Germany on the evening of March 7th 1945, alongside 525 other Lancasters and 5 Mosquitoes.

The other crew members were Sgt William Canning (Bomb Aimer), W/O Ivor Hextor Bond (Flight Engineer), F/O Roy Thomas Gawthorp (Navigator), Sgt Leslie Fredrick Tyrrell (Wireless Operator/Air Gunner), Sgt Alfred Francis Matthews (Air Gunner), Sgt Charles Edwin Preston (Air Gunner) and P/O Rudolph Walter Mahr RCAF (SDO). P/O Mahr was born in Germany but emigrated before the war to Canada and became a citizen before joining the Royal Canadian Air Force.

At 17:08, the plane lifted off from RAF Ludford Magna in the Lincolnshire Wolds. A total of 23 Lancasters would depart Ludford Magna that evening to support the raid, however they were the only crew not to return safely to Ludford in the early hours of the next morning. Whilst over Germany, the Lancaster was targeted and shot down by a Messerschmitt Bf 110G piloted by Luftwaffe ace Major Heinz Wolfgang Schnaufer, one of three Lancasters taken down by him that night.

Major Schnaufer had a total of 121 victories, making him the most decorated Luftwaffe Officer. One of the tailfins of the Bf 110G is exhibited in the Imperial War Museum in London, containing markers of the aircrafts that Schnaufer downed. One of these representing Gibbon’s Lancaster with the date 7.3.45, was one of the last allied aircraft to be shot down by the German pilot.

Squadron Leader Gibbon and his crew were classified as “Lost Without Trace” by the RAF. However, in 2013 a crash site was located near Dortmund with excavations and research pointing towards it being the PD268. All of the crew are commemorated on the Runnymede memorial, with none of them currently having any known grave.