From the Electronic Telegraph in London...
 FLIGHT Lieutenant Tom 'Tammy' Simpson, who has died in Tasmania aged
 80, was a sergeant rear-gunner in Wing Commander Guy Gibson's
 celebrated 617 Dambusters Squadron.
     In May 1943, Simpson was rear gunner in his fellow Australian
 Mick Martin's Lancaster bomber, "P for Popsie". The crew, which
 included several other Australians - Toby Foxlee (front gunner),
 Jack Leggo, (navigator), and Bob Hay (bomb aimer) - was said to be
 just about the finest in Bomber Command.
     Simpson was awarded a DFM for his courage during the night attack
 on the Mohne and Eder Dams in the industrial Ruhr.
     As Martin took the Lancaster in on a run on the target, Hay
 called: "There it is." Martin took the bomber in, skimming the dam
 waters at 50 ft. Simpson recalled: "Flak was coming very heavily from
 the dam's right-hand tower, over which Wingco's [Gibson's] kite,
 trying to draw the flak, was flying in a steep-banked turn.
     "In we went. We didn't have time to do much other than blaze away
 as Mick passed over the top of the dam with a foot or two to spare.
 There was an awful thud. We had been hit somewhere.
     "Toby and I belted at the flak towers. The Brownings [Lancaster
 guns] certainly worked overtime, so that the Jerry gunners didn't
 have it all their own way." Meanwhile, Hay had dropped P for Popsie's
 bouncing bomb, designed by Barnes Wallis.
     The crippled Lancaster had almost been given up for lost when
 Martin landed back at base at Scampton, two hours overdue. "I'm
 terribly sorry," he reported. "It didn't breach. The mist beat us
 and the flak."
     Simpson inspected the damage to the Lancaster. An outer wing and
 outer petrol tank were completely missing. Only the fact that the
 petrol tank had been empty had prevented a fire. The raid had cost
 eight bombers out of the 19 which reached the target area; but both
 dams were successfully breached.
     Thomas Drayton Simpson was born at Hobart, Tasmania, on November
 23 1917. He was a first-year law student at the University of Tas-
 mania, and a volunteer member of the 6th Field Brigade Horse Artill-
 ery, when he was accepted by the Royal Australian Air Force for pilot
 training.
     To Simpson's dismay, he was classified as a wireless operator-air
 gunner. In the summer of 1941, he crossed the Pacific to Vancouver,
 made a train journey across Canada and then took passage to Liverpool.
 Simpson was then billeted in a Bournemouth hotel and measured with a
 ruler to see if he was small enough to fit the turret of a Boulton
 Paul Defiant night fighter.
     He had been warned by his fellows that he stood little chance of
 survival in this obsolete aircraft, and since he met the 5ft 11in
 height limit, he only managed to evade the posting by gently easing
 himself onto his toes.
     Instead, he was posted to No 97, a twin-engine Manchester squad-
 ron - of the type soon to be discredited and withdrawn from
 operational service.
     On his first sortie, Simpson thought it best not to tell the
 bomber captain that he had never so much as fired a Browning gun.
     But Simpson and the aircraft survived, and in the New Year of
 1942 he was posted to No 455, an RAAF bomber squadron equipped with
 twin-engined Hampdens. His skipper was Mick Martin.
     In May, he was posted with Martin and his crew to No 50 Squadron,
 converting from Hampdens to Manchesters. Soon, he had mastered the
 squadron ditty, sung to the tune of Nol Coward's Mad Dogs and
 Englishmen: "When the sirens moan to awake Cologne they shiver in
 their shoes. In Berlin streets they're white as sheets with a tinge
 of Prussian blues. In Rostok the wardens know and yell 'Put out that
 bloody light'. When Hampdens from Swinderby go out in the moonlight
  . . . out in the moonlight . . . out in the moonlight."
     Shortly afterwards, the squadron moved on to Lancasters. Simpson
 had completed 48 operation sorties and was "resting" with a Lancaster
 test unit when he was recruited by Martin for his 617 crew.
     Following the dams raid, Simpson, now commissioned as a pilot
 officer, accompanied the squadron in a raid on September 14 1943 on
 the Dortmund-Ems canal. Of eight aircraft sent out, only three
 returned. Carried out at low level, this was the first attack
 employing new light-case 12,000lb bombs. Martin spent an hour and
 a half under attack - at only 150 ft, and in fog - above the canal,
 seeking an opportunity for his bomb aimer.
     Pumping away at flak positions, Simpson was running out of am-
 munition when Martin told him to save the remainder for the return
 trip. After 13 runs on the target, bomb aimer Hay released his wea-
 pon, hitting the canal. Simpson received the DFC.
     In the summer of 1944 Simpson was repatriated to Australia, and
 the next year resumed his law studies, graduating in 1948. He then
 practised as a barrister, and also worked devotedly for ex-service
 personnel.
     In 1995 Simpson published Lower than Low, an account of his war-
 time career.
 Ray Marsh, Brisbane, Australia.        raymarsh@hotmail.com
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