Britain’s last surviving Dambuster has slammed the “mindless vandalism” which saw white paint thrown over the Bomber Command Memorial.

The RAF Benevolent Fund said it was the fourth time in six years that the statue in London’s Green Park had been sabotaged, with the paint still wet at “daybreak” on Monday.

As a Dambuster, Squadron Leader George “Johnny” Johnson conducted a night of raids on German dams in 1943, in an effort to disable Hitler’s industrial heartland.

Bomber Command memorial vandalised
Damage to the Bomber Command Memorial (RAF Benevolent Fund/PA)

Reacting to the damage, the 97-year-old Bomber Command veteran said: “What a disgrace, such mindless vandalism.

“How disrespectful to the nearly 58,000 people who gave their lives so that these thugs have the freedom to carry out such acts? I hope they are caught soon, and suitably punished.”

Bomber Command veteran Air Commodore Charles Clarke, who flew in Lancasters as a bomb aimer and was captured by the Nazis and imprisoned in Stalag Luft III after he had to parachute from his burning plane, called the act disgraceful and mindless, adding it “did not achieve anything”.

A statue of Second World War prime minister Sir Winston Churchill in the capital’s New Bond Street was also targeted with white paint, and images on social media also showed damage to the Royal Marines Graspan Memorial on The Mall.

CCTV footage from nearby the Bomber Command Memorial – which commemorates more than 55,500 members of the Bomber Command who died in the Second World War – has been passed to police.

Scotland Yard said officers are investigating reports of criminal damage to a number of statues in west London.

Alongside the vandalism to the Bomber Command Memorial and the Churchill statue, the force said it has also received reports of damage to the Canada Memorial in Green Park, with white paint also sprayed onto a shop front in New Bond Street.

The Met said no arrests have been made, inquiries are ongoing, and that officers are “working to establish whether the incidents are linked”.

The RAF Benevolent Fund said it estimates that repairs could run into thousands of pounds.

Air Vice-Marshal David Murray, the charity’s chief executive, said: “This is the worst example of vandalism we have seen at the memorial and it is utterly heartbreaking to see the memory of all those brave airmen disrespected in this way.

Bomber Command memorial vandalised
The figures of Franklin D Roosevelt and Winston Churchill on the Allies sculpture in New Bond Street, London, which has been vandalised with white paint (Kirsty O’Connor/PA)

“This despicable act took just moments but will take considerable time and resources to put right.

“But like the remarkable men who the memorial commemorates, we will not rest until we have finished the job.”

Former British Army officer Johnny Mercer, now a Conservative MP, also decried the vandalism.

He said: “The courage and aspiration these memorials commemorate is sorely lacking in some corners of Britain – and in fact her politics – at the moment.”

The Bomber Command statue was vandalised in 2013 when a man daubed the word “Islam” on it shortly after the killing of Fusilier Lee Rigby outside Woolwich Barracks.

A week later, a second man wrote “Lee Rigby’s killers should hang”, “EDL” and “F*** the police” on the memorial. He was jailed for 12 weeks.