RAF war veteran's long-range mission

Dambuster Squadron Leader Tony Iveson in the cockpit of Motat's Lancaster. Photo / Paul Estcourt

Sixty-five years after his wartime flying missions, Squadron Leader Tony Iveson is still doggedly campaigning - this time for a memorial to the 55,000 members of Royal Air Force Bomber Command who died in action.

"Looking back, it was primitive and I wonder how we survived," he said yesterday, standing in the cramped cockpit of a restored Lancaster aircraft at the Museum of Transport and Technology in Auckland.

In missions over the Arctic Sea to bomb the battleship Tirpitz, he spent 12 hours at a time flying a Lancaster.

He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for flying a badly damaged plane home from Germany.

"The odds of not surviving a tour of duty were high - three out of five were casualties ... it's an experience to even stand in the Lanc, which was the queen of the skies of the time," he said.

Now vice-president of the command's British association, the 89-year-old met New Zealanders who served as RAF aircrew during World War II.

Squadron Leader Iveson also plans to have a reunion with two fellow members of the 617 "Dambusters" Squadron, Arthur Joplin of Auckland and Les Munro of Tauranga.

He said about $6.5 million had been raised to build a national monument in London and fundraising had passed the halfway mark.

Showing the design for the memorial in Piccadilly, he said he hoped it would be built by next year when there would still be plenty of veterans alive to see it.

The New Zealand association raised $100,000 for its own dramatic memorial, a bronze 1.2m wide and 1.8m high, produced by Peter Jackson's Weta Workshops.

Last year, the memorial was installed temporarily at the Auckland War Memorial Museum.

New Zealand sent 6000 men to serve in Bomber Command and 1850 were killed.

Peter Jackson is producing a remake of the war classic film The Dam Busters, which may be released next year.