John Kettler Posted January 8, 2017 Share Posted January 8, 2017 A Cambridge engineer set out not only to duplicate the bomb, on a smaller scale, but built and put all the necessary gear to properly drop it aboard a plane and ran an attack at 60 foot altitude, against a dam purpose built for the experiment. Must see. Though I've yet to watch it, here's a long documentary on the real attack, OPERATION CHASTISE. Have to say, given the purpose of the attack, the codename was brilliant. Regards, John Kettler 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Douglas Ruddd Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Thanks John for posting, excellent videos! Just amazing. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Kettler Posted January 9, 2017 Author Share Posted January 9, 2017 (edited) Douglas Rudd, A little digging turned up an excellent post on the workup of Squadron X (later, 617 Squadron), ingress and the attack on the Moehne Dam. Unfortunately, the 2014's post was supposed to have a Part 2, but doesn't yet. The site is still active, with a new post on New Year's Day. Guess the guy, a Canadian, found too many other things to write about. I knew about the whys and method used to fly at 60 feet, but I didn't realize the release distance was 425 yards. This is why the new effort, with a far lighter bomb, thus considerably less KE, has such a ridiculously close drop point. Simply put, it won't skip as far as the real one. http://danielwyatt.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-dambuster-raidpart-one.html This has some excellent grog goodies in it, including some background on the planned Howard Hawks film, the various official views of its feasibility, fabrications in the 1955 film which outraged Gibson, technical data on the dam, recon photos and more. http://www.neam.co.uk/dambusters.html OPERATION CHASTISE was one of my favorite WW II things, but the casualties were murderous. Worse, one bomb didn't detonate and was recovered intact. A nightmare for the British who feared getting the same treatment. Regards, John Kettler Edited January 9, 2017 by John Kettler 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Emrys Posted January 9, 2017 Share Posted January 9, 2017 Two or more likely three years ago, PBS ran the original movie of this experiment. The experiment mashed up so many factors trying to scale down the original design specs that the final outcome was laughably absurd. They had to fake so many factors to get the final footage, that it proved absolutely nothing. It may have been a fun movie project, but science it wasn't. Not even close. I haven't recently checked to see if the Nova website still lists the movie as available for viewing, but if you are really interested you might take a look. Michael 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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