Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aircraft and Vehicles => Topic started by: Furball on May 23, 2003, 12:12:44 PM
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I found this on the RAF Hendon museum's website, they have a new exhibit about 617 squadron.
The exhibit includes a lot of hand drawings and personal letters which can be viewed on the page below.
The Dambusters (http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/hendon/exhibitions/dambusters/index.cfm)
(http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/hendon/exhibitions/dambusters/images/dam-diagram.jpg)
(http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/hendon/exhibitions/dambusters/images/x001-6488.jpg)
(http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/hendon/exhibitions/dambusters/images/mohne_damage.jpg)
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If I remember right the bomb was spun at a moderate to high rpm opposite of it travel path before it was dropped.
This helped its skip characteristics and created the forces for the bomb to hold up against the dam face as it sank. It literally rolled down the dam face until it reached a predetermined depth. Detonation device was similar to that in a depth charge.
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The RAF also have a very comprehensive webpages:-
http://www.raf.mod.uk/history/chastise1.html
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There is also a "Dam Buster" web site.
http://www.dambusters.org.uk/
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Nice one furball, I've seen something of them at discovery channel, they first tried it with a round bomb, but it cracked.
very fun to see all the failures :)
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I saw some footage of some of the early test drops, when the Lanc is too low and the water splash from the bomb rips off half the tail, they were very lucky not crash.
total nutters those guys but amazing pilots and very brave
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yeah, but only the best and experienced where chosen tho
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Frank,
Where did you get that avatar?
MiG
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A lanc must be more sturdy than a b25 then, when it was used on b25s for anti-shipping, most the time the tail would fall off from the splash back.
Unfortunatly the b25 had another problem that was with the pilot and co-pilot's seat....
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:) 617 squadron
the best that britain had,they could hit the targert with pinpoint accuracy,with lancs mosies or what ever.
makes you feel honoured to be british,and all service men deserve respect for the defence of fredom,with out them and fighter command in 1940 england would be no more the green and pleasnt country we have.
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There was also a Highball bomb.This one was round and to be carried by Mosquitos of 618 Squadron. This was to be used against ships.
" This spherical bomb was designed by the brilliant Dr. Barnes Wallis to be utilized against ships. Weighing 1,280 lb (580kg) and packed with 600 lb (272kg) of explosive two Highballs could be carried by a Mosquito fighter-bomber. Prior to release the bomb was imparted with a backward spin of 700-900 revolutions per minute. Dropped at high speed 360 mph (580km/h) and low altitude 60 ft (18.2m) the Highball would skip across the water toward the target. "
http://www.danshistory.com/ww2/bombs.shtml#highball
by a 617 pilot
"Ken Brown knew nothing of this. His night raid over Berlin at the end of February, 1943, was his 23rd mission: he had flown 15 operations in Coastal Command and another 9 with 44 Squadron. On March 1st, his entire crew was summarily transferred to Squadron 617.
"There was a hastiness about it," recalls Brown, "trying to get us loaded on the train and rolling. We heard all kinds of rumours. Nobody was telling you anything."
The bouncing bomb
Except that the commanding officer had told Brown that he'd be "the backbone of the squadron. They need your experience." At the train station in Scampton, the 21-year-old pilot did a double-take. His new colleagues sported an impressive display of citations-Distinguished Flying Crosses, Distinguished Flying Medals, even a few Distinguished Service Orders. This was no ordinary squadron.
And the training itself was bizarre. Normally, pilots were reprimanded for flying too low; the Lancasters were designed to bomb from 20,000 feet and up. Five hundred feet was considered low-level flying.
Squadron 617 started at 250 feet and...
"When we got used to it, we went down to 150 feet. This was really low. But then they asked us to start flying at 60 feet, at night-this was a whole new experience. It was frightening. You had trees; you had high tension wires; many different obstacles. At that altitude, you can't be sloppy. If you dropped a wing at 60 feet, it'd scrape on the ground."
The airmen still knew nothing about Squadron 617 except that it seemed to include every hot&endash;shot crew in England. It didn't even have the planes it would use for the actual operation. They borrowed a few and practiced low-level flying with dummy bombs approximating the load they would carry. A few days before the raids, they got their planes and for the first time saw Barnes Wallis' top-secret bomb.
After two and a half months of training, Brown and the other air crew finally found out what they were supposed to destroy with the new bomb.
"Most of us thought it would be ships. Believe me, we wet all really shocked when our commander told us we were gain to do the dams, 'the great dams of Germany,' he said."
Now the men knew what their targets would be the Lister, the Mohne, the Eder and the Sorpe, the largest dam on the Ruhr and the hardest to hit. They were told the size of the dams, the water they contained, the way the bomb would ski across the water, sink down beside the dam and explode to crack it open, the acres of German land their mission would flood. It took five tons of water for each ton of steel produced they were told. If they were successful, the forces of nature would wreak more havoc than a thousand bombs, at less cost to the air force. It would have a tremendous impact on the war effort.
"We were impressed-and frightened about the whole thing," says Brown. "We thought, 'Holy Moses, surely those dams are defended.' They showed us the booms strung across the face of the dam to defend it. You couldn't hit the boom-the bouncing bomb had to go over the boom and into the dam.
"The bomb had to be dropped exactly 60 feet at an exact air speed. As it struck the water, it spun backwards, pushing water up in front of it like a geyser. The first crew to try it had their tail snapped off by the column of spray and barely limped back to land.
"If you got over there without running into high tension wires, or someone filling your bellybutton with lead, you were gonna be lucky. If you dropped the bomb, which most hadn't done yet, and got away with it, you were gonna be double lucky. And if you made it back, by God, you were gonna be lucky. "
http://www.valourandhorror.com/BC/Raids/Dam_1.htm
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Originally posted by CMC Airboss
Frank,
Where did you get that avatar?
MiG
I made it with Adobe ImageReady, things to do:
- Paste pic's.
- Play movie
:)
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Also used to breach prison walls and go into tunnels.
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if you want to see one of the wackiest bouncing bombs see if you can find the film of the Luftwaffe's version.
It was dropped from an aircraft, it then used a rocket to propel it up to high speed then the rocket drops away and the bouncing bomb goes off!
It incredible to watch.Apparently it was stopped due to inaccuracy and the difficulty of use but it sure 'looks' good even if it wasnt a good weapon.
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For Xmas I got a CD of scans of the squadron records for 617 squadron for the night of the dam raid - has the reports of every aircraft individually. Can't get to it now coz its packed for storage but I'll ask my parents where they got it from.
Sparks
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I watched the Move that was made of the Dambusters circa 1940 somthing, a cool flick, been a while since I have sean it though.
Sounds cool spark's be interested to hear whear it came from.
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Originally posted by Sparks
For Xmas I got a CD of scans of the squadron records for 617 squadron for the night of the dam raid - has the reports of every aircraft individually. Can't get to it now coz its packed for storage but I'll ask my parents where they got it from.
Sparks
You can get that info from this site, I mentioned previously.
http://www.dambusters.org.uk/wave1.htm