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<\/a>The Dam Busters—–by Paul Brickhill (Evans Brothers, London, 1958) [Photograph by Edith-Mary Smith]<\/p><\/div>It is over fifty years since Australian-born writer, Paul Brickhill, wrote his bestselling account of the bombing raid on the dams that provided water and hydro-electric power to industries in the Ruhr valley. The book led to a movie and to a popular and easy-to-whistle tune.<\/p>\n
This week in the war, on the night of 16 May 1943 and the early hours of the following day, Lancaster<\/em> bombers from the RAF’s recently formed 617 Squadron<\/a><\/em> attacked the M\u00f6hne, Edersee and Sorpe dams in Germany. The \u2018boffin\u2019<\/em> providing the technical expertise was Vickers engineer, Barnes Wallis, and the squadron was commanded by Wing Commander Guy Gibson.<\/p>\n Wallis had come up with the idea of breaching the dams, and the idea of doing it by sinking a bomb (in fact a depth charge) in the water alongside the dam wall—which would then crack from the shockwave when the bomb exploded. But how could one deliver a bomb so precisely—particularly when the approaches to the dams were defended by antiaircraft guns and by torpedo nets, positioned in the water?<\/p>\n Wallis’s solution was to design an oil-drum-shaped bomb that would spin as it descended. Each Lancaster<\/em> would fly low and level and drop\u00a0its bomb from an exact height, which would be measured by having a pair of searchlights—one in the plane’s nose, one in the tail—cross in an appropriate spot. After release, the bomb would bounce a couple of times on the surface of the water before thumping into the dam wall and sinking. The explosion would be triggered by water pressure.<\/p>\n The M\u00f6hne and Edersee were breached. The Sorpe was slightly damaged. Well over a thousand people died, some being civilians, others being prisoners in German P-o-W camps in the valleys below the dams. Fifty-three\u00a0were from the aircrews of the Lancasters<\/em> that had taken part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It is over fifty years since Australian-born writer, Paul Brickhill, wrote his bestselling account of the bombing raid on the dams that provided water and hydro-electric power to industries in the Ruhr valley. The book led to a movie and … Continue reading