The last surviving pilot of the legendary World War II Dambusters mission has cancelled the planned sale of his medals on Tuesday after a wealthy British nobleman intervened, the auction house handling the sale said. New Zealander Les Munro had planned to sell his medals, logbooks and other memorabilia to raise money for the upkeep of the Bomber Command War Memorial in London, with estimated annual proceeds of 50,000 pounds ($75,000). But the sale scheduled for Wednesday was cancelled after Lord Michael Ashcroft agreed to donate 75,000 pounds to the upkeep of the memorial, auction house Dix Noonan Webb (DNW) said. Munro flew one of the 19 Lancaster bombers that took off from a British air base on May 16, 1943, for a top-secret mission over Nazi Germany’s industrial heartland in the Ruhr region. They carried the revolutionary “bouncy bomb” which skidded along the water’s surface after being dropped and was used to attack three dams. The mission, immortalised in the 1955 film The Dam Busters starring Michael Redgrave and Richard Todd, destroyed two of its targets and damaged a third, drowning 1,600 people and forcing the Nazis to spend significant funds on reconstruction. DNW said Munro, 95, had agreed to donate his medals to the Auckland Museum of Transport and Technology, which in return would donate a further £10,000 to the maintenance of the memorial. “I am satisfied that I have achieved my aim of doing all I can to ensure the men of Bomber Command who lost their lives in World War II are remembered with pride for generations to come,” Munro said in a statement. He said he had been surprised by the response to his plan to sell the medals and was pleased they would remain in New Zealand. “There was a balance to be struck between raising funds for the RAF Benevolent Fund and ensuring my medals were preserved for future generations of New Zealanders,” he added. “Lord Ashcroft’s very generous proposal represents the best way of achieving both of these goals and I am extremely grateful to him.” Ashcroft donated £1 million towards the $6 million construction cost of the Bomber Command Memorial, which opened in 2012 and is dedicated to the 55,573 bomber crew who died in World War II. Maintenance of the limestone pavilion, which displays bronze statues of a bomber crew returning from a mission, is under the RAF Benevolent Fund.