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Pictured: Alan Gillespie

The poignant archives of two tragic airmen who were in the first aircraft to take off on the legendary Dambusters raid have been unearthed almost 80 years later.

Alan Gillespie and Jack Liddell were killed along with the rest of their crew when their Lancaster bomber struck an electricity pylon during the low-level night-time raid.

The aircraft crashed in a ball of flames in a German village 60 miles from their target of the Sorpe Dam.

Now both men's medals and RAF log books and moving letters and telegrams sent to their parents confirming their deaths have been brought together.