Operation Chastise: The RAF's Most Brilliant Attack Of World War II, Hastings - B

                  This is the story of one of the most famous events of the war, one well known in 1943 because of its daring success, and better known a decade later when featured in a major motion picture. In 1943, both the US and the UK were bringing the war to Germany through their bombing operations over Europe. Within Britain's Bomber Command,  there were those who wanted to saturate cities and those who pined for military/industrial targets. One target identified early in the war was the Mohne Dam, which supplied the Ruhr Valley. The RAF researched the possibilities, and an eccentric designer named Barnes Wallis created a bouncing bomb that theoretically could destroy the Mohne Dam. The bombs were 7500 pounds, and modifications to strengthen the Avro-Lancaster bomber were required. Mid-May was the optimum time because the dams would at their highest capacity. Bomber Command selected Guy Gibson, twenty-four, as commander of Operation Chastise. He recruited the 617th Squadron and began a seven week training program of very low level flying. This operation was to be conducted at a few hundred feet above ground, as opposed to the usual 15,000. A month before the planned attack, Wallis and Vickers had yet to come up with a bomb that worked. They eventually settled on a cylindrical bomb to be dropped from 60 feet, 410 yards from the dams, from a plane flying 210-220 mph.

                 On the morning of May 16,  the 133 men of the squadron were finally briefed on  their targets. After a special meal of bacon and eggs, the men climbed into the nineteen planes at 2030 GMT. They flew the entire way below 500 feet. A little after midnight, the first five attackers bombed the Mohne Dam. Two bombs sunk, one bounced over, and two hit the dam, and the Mohne was breached. The next target was the Eder Dam and the fifth and final bomb punched a hole in it. The third target, an earthen dam at Sorpe,  could not be damaged. Indeed, it still stands today. Eight planes did not return to England. On the ground, somewhere between 1300 and 1500 people died, half slave laborers and POW's. Germany's war making capacity was diminished, but far from crippled. The Mohne was repaired by the fall.

                Operation Chastise was widely praised and hailed in the UK and the US. Gibson received the Victoria Cross and every officer a DSO.  Wallis received a CBE and long after the war was knighted. The airmen were less fortunate. Only a quarter of those who returned that fateful night survived the war. Although Gibson was feted in the UK, Canada and the US, he managed to get back into bombers, and died over Europe in September of 1944. In the 1955, film the Dam Busters Wallis and Gibson were played by Michael Redgrave and Richard Todd.