The Dambusters
These were among the headlines that greeted the news that Lancasters from 617 Squadron had demolished two enormous German dams during the night of 16/17 May 1943. But since then, the operation has been dismissed as a 'publicity stunt', a 'misconceived concept', 'not worth a single aeroplane' and having had a 'negligible effect on the German war effort'
With The Dambusters, military historian John Sweetman – formerly senior lecturer in war studies and head of defence and international affairs at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst – has written an authoritative account of the raid: conceived out of necessity, prepared for against the tightest of deadlines and carried out in the face of unimaginable danger.
Barnes Wallis – the 54-year-old assistant chief designer (structures) at Vickers-Armstrongs and the scientific brains behind the raid and the spinning 'bouncing bombs' that were at its heart – conducted a series of trials to see if the bombs were feasible. Finally deciding that they were, in early February 1943 he summarised his findings in a 19-page document entitled 'Air attack on dams'. In this edited extract, he presents this to the powers-that-be for approval ...
Wallis listed five dams – the Möhne, Sorpe, Lister, Ennepe and Henne – that together held back 254 million cubic metres of water to supply the 'domestic and industrial' needs of 'the Ruhr district'. He argued that the emptying of the Möhne reservoir alone would 'cause a disaster of the first magnitude' and that the destruction of the others would enhance the disruption of traffic on the Ruhr River and possibly the Dortmund-Ems Canal. Floods would damage factories, road and rail systems as well as 13 electricity stations in the area.
Further east, the Eder and Diemel dams held back 222 million cubic metres of water, their principal function being to 'provide a regular supply of water for pumping from the Weser [River] into the Mittelland Canal', a 200-mile-long lateral link running from the Rhine to Berlin and transporting crucial industrial products. Flooding would affect factories in towns such as Kassel, inundate and wash away valuable agricultural soil and destroy important electricity generating stations.
'Tripe of the wildest description'
Much of this was a repetition of information already contained in
previous staff papers, but that at least ensured a sympathetic hearing.
Not from every quarter, however. Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur Harris, whose Bomber Command would have to execute any attack on the dams, reacted badly. On 14 February, referring to the details of Wallis's proposal and the possibility of losing a valuable Lancaster squadron from his bombing campaign on Germany for 'two or three weeks', he wrote: 'This is tripe of the wildest description. There are so many ifs & ands that there is not the smallest chance of its working.'
Unless the bomb were 'perfectly' balanced, he continued, the vibration as it spun would either 'wreck' the aircraft or 'tear the bomb loose'. 'I don't believe a word of its supposed ballistics on the surface ... The war will be over before it works – & it never will.' He was utterly opposed to 'putting aside Lancasters & reducing our bombing effort on this wild goose chase'.
'Maddest proposition'
Four days later, in a personal note, Harris sought the support of
the Chief of the Air Staff (CAS) against 'all sorts of enthusiasts and
panacea mongers now careering round the MAP [Ministry of Aircraft Production]
suggesting the taking of about 30 Lancasters off the production line to
rig them up for this weapon, when the weapon itself exists so far only
within the imagination of those who conceived it'. Harris thought Wallis's
idea 'just about the maddest proposition as a weapon that we have yet
come across – and that is saying something'.
'I am prepared,' Harris went on, 'to bet my shirt (a) that the weapon itself cannot be passed a prototype for trial inside six months; (b) that its ballistics will in no way resemble those claimed for it; (c) that it will be impossible to keep such a weapon in adequate balance either when rotating it prior to release or at all in storage; and (d) that it will not work, when we have got it.' He ended by reminding the CAS that attempts to use heavy bombers in low-level attacks had 'almost without exception been costly failures'.
Harris had a point. Wallis's weapon had not yet been finalised, and Harris retained a healthy suspicion of eccentric inventors from his First World War days in the Royal Flying Corps. Then he had reacted scathing to a suggestion that he fire a harpoon at Zeppelins over London, pointing out that, as the gas-filled envelope exploded, his aircraft would just have reached its vicinity.
Crackpot schemes during the present conflict – such as dropping rats with incendiaries tied to their tails, to set fire to the Black Forest in south-western Germany – scarcely improved his opinion.
A five-ton lump of iron
When Wallis travelled to High Wycombe in company with Captain Joseph
'Mutt' Summers, the test pilot, to show Harris films of the various airborne
tests, he was predictably greeted with an unwelcoming roar: 'What the
hell do you damned inventors want? My boys' lives are too precious to
be thrown away by you!'
Even after seeing the films, Harris remained hostile, and with good reason, as R A Cochrane – now AOC (Air Officer Commanding) No. 5 Bomber Group, who would eventually oversee the Dambusters raid – remarked. Wallis was proposing to project 'a five-ton lump of iron across a lake'. And Harris's operational problems, given the continuing loss rate of his bombers, were certainly acute. The forecast production of new Lancasters for April 1943 was 123. Wallis's supporters wanted a quarter of this monthly total for one – and, to Harris's mind, bizarre – operation.
'Silly nonsense'
On 23 February, Wallis received a shock. Summoned to Vickers-Armstrongs'
main office in London, he was instructed by the company's chairman, Sir
Charles Craven, to 'stop this silly nonsense about the destruction of
the dams'. He was making a thorough nuisance of himself at the MAP, upsetting
members of the Air Staff and directly or indirectly damaging the firm's
commercial interests.
Utterly shocked, Wallis offered to resign, to which Craven reacted violently, banging the desk and shouting, 'Mutiny!' Suspecting that Craven had been surreptitiously approached, Wallis wrote in his diary: 'What happened on the golf links at Ulverston?'
'Bust the dams'
Unknown to Wallis, or Craven, events elsewhere were moving much more
favourably, an indication of the bureaucratic maze at the centre of the
decision- making process. The proverbial right and left hands really did
not know what each other was doing.
The CAS in 1943 was Air Chief Marshall Sir Charles Portal, who, while holding Harris's current post in 1940, had proposed sending a special squadron of Hampdens armed with torpdoes against the Möhne. He therefore proved rather less critical than Harris had hoped.
Replying to Harris's personal plea, he refused to dismiss Wallis's plan out of hand and revealed that he had authorised the allocation of three Lancasters for trial purposes. He assured Harris that he would not allow more of 'your precious Lancasters to be diverted' until the concept of the new weapon had been fully tested.
The unpalatable implication from Harris's viewpoint was that, if these trials were successful, Portal would back the proposed operation. Shortly afterwards, he told Harris: 'If you want to win the war, bust the dams.'
Reversal of fortune
Three days after his traumatic encounter with Craven, Wallis experienced
a complete reversal of fortune. Called to a meeting at the MAP on 26 February,
he not only learned that the operation was to go ahead after all, but
that Portal wanted 'every endeavour' to carry it out that spring.
The Möhne reservoir would soon be full and the Germans would begin withdrawing water from it at a rate of 10 feet per month. Because Wallis's weapon would not be effective if exploded lower than 40 feet below the crest of the dam, the operation had to be launched by 26 May at the latest.
Calling Wallis's bluff
Wallis had often forecast that only eight weeks would be needed to
develop 'Upkeep', the codename allocated to his back-spun weapon. He later
confessed that, as he left the meeting, he felt 'physically sick, because
somebody had called my bluff'. He realised 'the terrible responsibility
of making good all my claims'. For, in spite of Wallis's enthusiasm and
optimism, on 26 February no full-size weapons had been tested and, in
truth, none was even on the drawing board.
Norbert Rowe, a long-standing friend of Wallis and present at the meeting, sensed Wallis's anguish. Knowing that he had 'spiritual depths', Rowe offered him a copy of a prayer to St Joseph, which he himself had found helpful in times of stress. Faith, in every sense of the word, was a much-needed commodity now.
Find out more
Websites
Southampton Flight Simulator
www.sfsim.com
Website edited by Dr Kenji Takeda, who designed the software/hardware
interface for the simulator and appeared extensively in The Dambusters
documentary. The website provides some details on how the simulation was
achieved.
Operation Chastise
www.raf.mod.uk/bombercommand/dambusters.html
This concise article is part of the Bomber Command website.
617 Squadron
www.raf.mod.uk/structure/617squadron.cfm
Official RAF web page for the Dambusters' squadron, which, exactly 60 years after the World War II attack, saw action in Iraq.
Dambusters
www.dambusters.org.uk/
Well-designed enthusiast's site with a huge amount of information.
Cracking Dams: Dambusters
http://simscience.org/cracks/dambusters.html
Small site that has clips from the Dambusters film (you need
the QuickTime plug- in).
The air war and the British bomber crews
www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/
air_war_bombers_01.shtml
Interesting article by Mark Fielder on how RAF Bomber Command took
the war straight to the German heartland but at a terrible cost to the
crews. Part of the BBC History website.
