Spare a thought this Tuesday evening for the 133 aircrew members of
617 Squardron who began taking off from RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire at 21-28 destination
The Ruhr Valley in Germany.
Three waves of bombers 19 AVRO Lancasters that had been modified to carry Barnes Wallis Bouncing bomb would leave this airfield only 11 Lancasters would return. By the following morning 8 Lancasters would have been lost resulting
in 53 aircrew killed and another 3 taken prisoner of war.
Most people would recognize this raid as The Dambusters Raid an attack on three dams , The Mohne, Eder and Sorpe dams.
Resulting in Mohne Dam being attacked and breached and The Eder Dam attacked and collapsed. The flooding which resulted killed about 1300 people on the ground.
Operation Chastise was lead by Wing Commander Guy Gibson who would later be killed in another operation flying over Holland.
Anyone been to The Ruhr Valley dams or any of the practice sites used in England would love to hear your comments.
Some of the stories of the aircrew are very upsetting if you read them.
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I was back there some time ago in a year which was a "special" anniversary of the raid, a week or 2 before the actual date when a memorial fly-by was planned. On the memorial day itself the valley was packed with onlookers, but for my visit I had it almost to myself. I was walking beside the reservoirs when I heard an unmistakable throbbing engine beat, and down the valley came the Lancaster of the Memorial Flight, doing a practise run for the big day. Unforgettable!
I have also visited the Mohne Dam, and its resemblance to the Derwent and Howden Dams was remarkable - just a difference in the shape of the towers (square at Derwent and pyramidal at Mohne). But what was truly uncanny was that the surrounding geography was so similar. Not just the hills. The visitors' carpark and visitors' centre at Derwent and Mohne were similarly placed overlooking the foot of the 2 dams, and even the nearby footpaths took similar courses.
The loss of life, both of aircrew and on the ground, is now considered by many to be out of proportion to the military advantage gained, although it was of course a great morale-booster to the civilian population of the UK.
https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2662322
Thanks for the anniversary reminder. Fascinating story and one of the many interesting examples of Allied ingenuity.
I know how you feel when you hear the sound of those engines.What a sight that plane makes.
I was lucky enough to see it pass overhead on 4th May this year.@N01R4M
Where was top photo takenChizz said:
We will NEVER see the likes of again
Cambridge Professor Hugh Hunt put together a research team to recreate the Barnes Wallis work, starting with using a cricket ball bowling machine on a swimming pool and culminating in this "small"-scale recreation. It was the subject of a C4 documentary called Dambusters: Building the Bomb. I am not sure if it's still available, other than clips on YouTube. Here's the one that shows the test...
On the below link is a video of the Reculver testing at 53 seconds in but no shot of the towers.
https://www.avroheritagemuseum.co.uk/woodford#:~:text=Woodford Aerodrome was Avro's main,assembly of 4,101 Lancaster bombers.
Sgt Frederick Tees should have been the nose gunner that night but had exchanged places with Sgt Harry Strange that night.
Both Frederick,s mother and father died during the war. His mother lossed her life when a plane crashed on her work place in Sussex.
After the war Frederick ran a Gentlemens barber shop in Letchworth Hertfordshire, that was his profession and his fathers .
Frederick Tees passed away on 1st March 1982,having taken his own life.
RIP.
There is another Lanc in the UK that has been under restoration to flight but has been a very long process