On This Day in History: May 17

The Dambusters

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“Okay, so, like” *takes hit from joint* “We build a bomb, right? But it’s not a regular bomb. *another hit* It’s, like, a bouncing bomb. A bomb that can bounce . . . on water. And then, and then, it hits this Nazi dam . . . and BLAMMO!” *uncontrollable giggling*

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: May 17, 1943--

In the 1982 film Conan, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s dad tells him about the “riddle” of steel, but he didn’t mention anything about the hydroelectric dams that were critical to its mass production. World War II was very much a conflict of metal used to rend flesh from bone. 

Ew. Anyway, there were hydroelectric dams in Northwest Germany generating power to make steel and the Brits wanted to blow that shit up. Problem was, the accuracy of bomber aircraft at the time was . . . not so good. That’s why they preferred to blow up entire cities and say, “Eh, good enough.” 

There were torpedo nets around the dams, so that wasn’t going to work, and the idea came about to create a cylindrical-shaped bomb whirled to a backward spin of 500 rpm that would skip like a flat stone across the water, hit the dam wall, then blow that damn dam to damnation. But you know how when you skip a stone you need to throw it low to the water? Yeah, these fuckers had to fly low. 

They flew low most of the way, to avoid radar detection. Only about a hundred feet. Nineteen Lancaster bombers were involved in the operation, and one got so low its bomb was ripped off by ocean waves, and two others crashed into power lines. Did I mention this was at night? Early in the morning of May 17, 1943, the surviving aircrews approached a number of German dams, getting as low as 60 feet above the water and charging straight at the dam walls before hitting release. 

Two dams were destroyed and a third was damaged. Of the 19 aircraft involved in the mission, eight didn’t return. Things sucked more for those on ground. About 1,600 died from the dam destruction, mostly civilians, a lot of them Soviet prisoners who were forced laborers. 

It was such a daring raid the “Dambusters” became front page news worldwide, making it an important propaganda win. From a larger strategic point of view, it was at first thought to have been only a modest success, and the head of Bomber Command thought it a waste of resources. After all, the fucking Nazis rebuilt the dams within five months. But more recent historical analysis proclaims that dozens of bridges and war production facilities for 40 miles downstream were destroyed, and thousands of acres of farmland needed to feed the Nazi war effort were ruined. A German report said the event resulted in “a considerable loss of production.” 

It’s believed the raid, called Operation Chastise, diverted considerable resources to both rebuild and protect the dams against future attacks, resulting in significantly reduced defenses faced by the Allies in the D-Day raid on Normandy a year later. 

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