02/26/2026
The daring Dambusters raid in the night of 16/17 May 1943 is among the most memorable events of World War II.
Already well before the war in 1937 the British Air Ministry had contemplated about what could be strategic targets in Germany in case war would break out. The Dams in the Ruhr valley were high on their list, but at the same time were also considered as complicated targets. Simply bombing these huge concrete dam structures was deemed impossible.
Inspired by playing with skimming stones as a child, assistant Chief designer at Vickers, Barnes Wallis came up with the idea to develop a skimming or rather a bouncing bomb.
His idea was to drop a heavy bomb from an aircraft and let it bounce towards the dam in order to bring it right up close to the dam wall, let it sink and then detonate at the dams weak spots at their based below the water surface. This would also bypass the underwater anti-torpedo nets that the Germans had placed to protect their dams.
He started experimenting in his back garden by shooting glass marbles across a tub filled with water in order to calculate what velocity and angle would be needed to make a heavy bomb bounce.
After various small scale experiments in a huge water basin and on outdoor scale models he got permission to conduct full scale trials with the use of a Wellington bomber. These trials were conducted at Chesil Beach in Dorset.
Initially the experiments were carried out with drum shaped mockup bombs with a wooden outer casing. Until the 1970s it was kept secret that the drum was given a back-spin to make it bounce as desired. A Avro Lancaster bomber was equiped with a special spinning construction to make the bomb spin just before being released.
With every test the wooden casing would not hold up to the forces when it hit the water surface and thus the bomb would disintegrate. Wallis realized that he didn't need the wooden casing and thus continued testing without.
After many experiments Barnes Wallis got it right. He managed to let a bomb bounce 20 times over a distance of nearly 400 meters and concluded that the aircraft would have to fly at a dangerously low level of only 18 meters and needed to release the bomb at a highly precise distance from the dams at a speed of 232 mph.
A film made of the Chesil Beach trials convinced the Air Ministry to go head with the Dambusters project.
Calculating the precise distance from the dam, height and speed was a practical nightmare. Two spotlights were mounted underneath the bombers which would shine their beams on the water surface. At the precise height of 18 meters these beams would converge. A catapult-alike device was constructed to visually determine the distance to the dam.
Also the approach path to the dams could not be a straight line, but due to hilly terrain and anti-aircraft flak the pilots needed to train for complicted approach manoevres.
A special RAF squadron was formed for the so called "Operation Chastise": the famous 617 squadron as part of No.5 group RAF. Clearly the operation's name indicated the intent to give the German war industry a huge flogging.
The squadron was lead by the only 25 year old Wing Commander Guy Gibson. 13 Australians also formed part of the crew.
Eventually it was decided to deploy Avro Lancaster Mark III special type 464 bombers for the operation, the most powerful bomber of the RAF, capable of handling the 3400 kg heavy bouncing bombs.
The crews practised at the Eyebrook Reservoir, Abberton Reservoir near Colchester, Derwent Reservoir and Chesil Beach.
On the night of 16 May 1943 two Lancaster formations respectively consisting of 9 and 5 bombers took off from RAF Scampton in Lancashire in the north east of England. Their selected targets were the Möhne Dam and the Sorpe Dam, upstream from the Ruhr industrial area, and the Eder Dam on the Eder River more East.
A third mobile reserve formation of 5 Lancasters took off two hours later, either to also bomb the main dams or to attack three smaller secondary target dams.
As stated, there aim was to shut down the hydro power stations that provided the German war industry in the Ruhr area with electric power.
A code name "Ni**er" was chosen that would be reported over the radio if a dam had been effectively hit. Ni**er (not "Digger"!) was the name of Guy Gidson's squadron mascot, a black labrador dog.
The film ends with my conclusions regarding what impact the Dambusters raid had on the German war machine. It is followed by all the names of the crew members of the 19 Lancaster bombers of 617 squadron that participated in the raid.
Each crew consisted of a Pilot, Flight engineer, Navigator, Wireless operator, Bomb aimer, Front gunner and Rear gunner.
The Eder and the Möhne dam were effectively breached. Barnes Wallis' idea had worked. The other attacked Dams remained in tact.
RAF 617 squadron lost 56 aircrew out of a total of 133, with 53 dead and 3 captured, and lost of 8 out of 19 aircraft.
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The daring Dambusters raid in the night of 16/17 May 1943 is among the most memorable events of World War II.Already well before the war in 1937 the British ...
