Squadron Leader M. L. “Mac” Hamilton, DFC, wartime bomber pilot, was born on January 31, 1918. He died on April 26, 2008, aged 90

Joining the famous 617 Dambusters Squadron as a Lancaster captain in 1944, “Mac” Hamilton took part in some of its most celebrated operations of the post-dams raid period under the brilliant leadership of its deep-thinking CO, Leonard Cheshire. Hamilton was on the spectacular Munich raid of April 1944 in which 617, flying as the vanguard of a 5 Group force of 200 bombers, inflicted huge damage on the city’s railyards.

He also took part in the D-Day spoof that fooled German coastal radar into thinking that wave after wave of Lancasters flying towards the French coast and dropping “window” — tinfoil strips — at regular intervals were in fact the ships of the main Allied invasion force heading in to the Pas de Calais. German coastal guns opened a furious fire on this phantom armada.

Subsequent raids undertaken by Hamilton, using the Barnes Wallis designed 12,000lb “Tallboy” deep penetration bomb, included V2 launch sites and the first two attacks, in September and October 1944, on the battleship Tirpitz by 617 Squadron, the first in Altafjord, the second in Tromsøfjord. He was disappointed to miss the battleship’s coup de grâce of November 1944, being on leave at the time. But he was consoled to learn later, with other 617 men, that in fact the Altafjord attack had crippled the Tirpitz, which had thereafter been moored merely as a floating fortress. Hamilton was awarded the DFC in 1945.

After the war he was given a permanent commission and in the mid-1950s he commanded 267 Squadron engaged in communications, transport, casualty evacuation and psychological warfare operations against communist insurgents during the Malayan Emergency.

Manuel Cansino, MBE, Sephardic Jewish leader, was born on July 12, 1914. He died on February 26, 2008, aged 93

Haim Manuel Cansino devoted his life and most of his father’s considerable wealth to a small minority within a minority, the Anglo-Jewish Sephardim, descendents of Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal, 1492-97. Though long since overtaken in numbers by Ashkenazi Jews of northern European descent, the Sephardim had been the first Jews to resettle in England under Oliver Cromwell’s protection. A self-proclaimed Jewish aristocracy, fiercely proud of their special traditions, they also were prominent in the City of London and in public life.

Born in Manchester and orphaned at 15 years old while a pupil at Manchester Grammar School, Cansino almost immediately stepped into his father’s shoes as a patron of Jewish causes. He attended Manchester University for only one year before leaving to continue his father’s philanthropic activities.

His family came from a dynasty of Jews who fled from Spain to North Africa. Though not permitted to live as a Jew in Spain, Jacob Cansino of Oran was ennobled in 1556 by Charles V of Spain, and became Spanish Ambassador to Morocco, a post inherited by his descendants. In the 19th century the Cansinos arrived in Manchester and made their fortune in trade with Morocco. Manuel Cansino was a cousin of Lord Hore-Belisha, Neville Chamberlain’s War Minister. After the Second World War he moved to London where, with his brother-in-law Robert Carvalho, and the judges Sir Alan Mocatta and Neville Laski, QC, he virtually ran the Sephardic community’s main congregation, based in Maida Vale. He occupied the posts of parnas presidente (board president) and life elder. He was honorary secretary of the committee which organised the commemoration in 1956 of the resettlement of Jews in Britain in 1666. He chaired the supervisory board for London’s kosher meat, and was active in the Maccabeans.

Each year, at the special Passover meal, he gathered members of the Carvalho, Pinto, Bueno de Mesquita, Mocatta and Sebag-Montefiore families to chant the Seder service with melodies peculiar to a few congregations in London, Manchester, Amsterdam, New York and Montreal.

Cansino was one of the last survivors of a British elite that retained its identity and traditions for 500 years after their expulsion from Iberia.

Aaron Emanuel, CMG, civil servant, was born on February 11, 1912. He died on March 13, 2008, aged 96