'Dam Busters' - 60 years ago, the Möhne Dam was bombed

Walter, that is not true, the british bombed the damn in the belief that it would seriously impair the german war effort, which is a perfectly valid reason, it wasn't anything to do with killing people.

Now bombing dresden THAT WAS about killing people and is something that none of us are proud of and it's something we have to live down.

Lets hope to god none of us ever sink to these levels again.

Well, I do believe as well that the British wanted to disturb the German war maschine.
However, it had to do with killing people, since they lived in the valley(s).

Just re read some of these posts... most amusing.


DA DA DA DA DA DA DA DA DA
DA DA DA DA DA DA DA DA
De DA DA DA
De DA

McTag, you should put your musical talents to the service of the nation.

Kev, which dam damn was that?

They have been showing this on PBS in the US, and in High Definition too. Some of the photos look great, but to show the old footage in HD makes absolutely no sense to me. They did simulate the actual bombing runs though, even put in tracer rounds. Pretty cool.

This was actually a horrible day in aviation history. Something like 60% of the fliers didn't return.

For some hundred civilian people in my county as well.



The Virtual Museum of the Public Record Office has two photos of staff/bombers online:

Weren't the attacks a failure anyways - dams were restored so quickly...

As German war production continued to increase until the Summer of 1944, it seems the strategic effect of the raids were minimal.

The dams were restored quickly, indeed, and the bombing didn't effact the industry a lot.

Only some hundreds of civilians died.

I can certainly attest to the fact that

1. The Sauerland is very picturesque and well worth visiting.

2. The Moehne dam is rebuilt and absolutely massive.

3. Everthing that Walter says is true (always) except when he's playing games.

I heard a song on the radio last night called

"There's too much month at the end of the money"

and I think we can all relate to that.

The bombings were successful in taking out vital bridges down the river and train tracks. They used the bouncing bomb which took close to a year to perfect in order to get the bomb to bounce off the water and hit the dam, but the bouncing bombs were made to then sink at the face of the dam and then blow.
The casualty rate among the bomb carriers was high. The planes bringing the bombs had to fly so low to drop the bomb and they flew into enemy fire the whole time. Enemy fire coming directly at the pilots and their planes.
If This is the same dam I believe they also targeted and destroyed 2 other dams.

This is, how it was done:


Out of the 133 engaged RAF soldiers, 54 died during the attack.

Casualties among the civilians were 1,284 persons (amongst them 700 Russian female forced labourers).

There were now 'vital' bridges destroyed, since there is and was nothing of any importance to connect (leaving out the fact that of course some villager where hindered for 4 weeks to go from one village to the next on the shortest way).


The other damn were the Eder

43 dead civilians, rebuilt within 4 months,

and the Sorpe, where only small damages happened.

RAF : Bomber Command Daily Report 18th May 1943 Extract

Good photos showing the bouncing bomb. Thanks Walter.

well, from my pov, walter, a heart stopper.

I saw a documentary on this some months back. The conclusions were apart from the ingenuity of the British the campaign was extremely successful even though the damage to the dams was not as significant as the English hoped.

The true payback was propaganda value and its effect on German morale. This had enormous strategic value. After months of blitz bombing of London suddenly the Allies were successfully stirking deep into German territority on there first attempts. They showed they had the morale, and capacity to inflict deep wounds on Germany on its home base right at the plate.

It was this victory and its effect on morale for both sides of the War that really was the achievement of the Dam Busters.

It really has had value for the propaganda in Britain, I think, but not much - if some! - here on German morale, was even strengthening it, as far as I know from the people, who lived there in those times.

Walter, g-day lives in Australia

This is a response to a discussion a while back, the dam sabotages were perfectly valid for the war effort what i don't understand is why the allies had to bomb the **** out of every single german city. especially Dresden which 130, 000 people died from allied bombing and this was february 14 only 3 months until the nazi's surrendered. Now that was the allied commanders and pilots moving from tactical operations to genocide and in many cases in the last 4 months of nazi germany, innocent germans were raped pillaged and killed...some allied commanders should have faced war crime punishments....but also germans do to for the concentration camps but they already paid.....sorry got a bit off topic here.




-Hans

By pure change, I found this excellent online-exhibition by the National Archives:

the national archives: Dambusters

What about to change the subject to 61 years ago?