Page 74 - Cormorant Issue 20 2017

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Dambusters Dinner – 8th June 2017 Wg Cdr Tim Lindsay
FOLLOWING THE EXTREMELY SUCCESSFUL events hosted by the Royal Navy, the British Army and the Royal Marines, it was
down to the Royal Air Force to end the series of ACSC 20 of cial Mess dinners. We had learned of skill, courage, fortitude and
sacri ce at Trafalgar, Taranto, Waterloo and it was on 8th June
2017 that we gathered to remember the 133 aircrew,
from the newly formed 617 Sqn, who, on 16 May 1943,
“
took off in 19 Lancaster bombers from RAF Scampton, to disrupt the wartime production of Germany by bombing the dams of the Ruhr in Op CHASTISE.
At the start of the Second World War, strategic target analysis had shown that destruction of up to seven dams in the Ruhr Valley would cripple the industrial capability of Germany by restricting water usage and hydro-electricity generation. Prior to 1942, however, there had been no method of attacking dams, due
to the lack of suitable weapons. The invention of
the UPKEEP ‘bouncing bomb’ by Barnes Wallis allowed the bomb, once dropped, to skip across the surface of the water and stop against the dam wall, delivering a concentrated blast effect of suf cient force to cause a breach. The main dif culty was that the bomb had to be dropped from a height of just
60 feet and at a speed of 232 mph. If that wasn’t considered challenging enough, the crews were to y
The main
dif culty was that the bomb had
to be dropped from a height of just 60 feet... ◆◆◆