Hello There! A few weeks ago I returned from a tour of Bomber Command related sites, which was a Christmas present from my partner. I was very surprised and really looking forward to this as I always wanted to visit Colditz Castle, but this also included visits to the site of The Great Escape, The Mohne and Eder Dams, a number of Cold War and World War Two sites, (including Checkpoint Charlie, Berlin and Dresden), a number of military museums and visits to a number of cemeteries which hold the graves of many brave airmen who were involved in many of the RAF raids during World War Two.
To save the reader from 'Death by Photo and blog' I will serve up a small piece of the tour, one at a time.
First up is the Mohne Dam. This is an impressive structure which during World War Two held massive amounts of water to provide hydro electric power for the Ruhr Industrial area. It was part of a series of dams forming a series of great lakes which would gradually fill during the Winter months, so raising the water level, then gradually emptying to provide hydro electric power.
The idea of destroying the Dams came from Barnes Wallis, but was also separately considered by the RAF early in the war.
Wallis had previously designed the Wellington bomber, besides many other inventions. These included, later in the war, the Grand Slam and the Tallboy bombs. The 'bouncing bomb' was otherwise known as the 'UPKEEP'
Barnes Wallis expanded on the idea that while the RAF could dehouse workers, destroy factories and bomb rail yards, if you could destroy the enemies means of producing the weapons to wage war, then the Nazi war efforts would be dramatically affected.
Although workers and factories can be moved or, later in the war, moved into tunnels and caves, so making them impervious to bombing. the power requirements for factories, (gas works, oil refineries, coal mines, power stations and hydro electric power), to produce weapons of war, were immovable so would be more easy to attack.
As seen in the 'Dam Busters' film, both the Mohne and Eder dams have two towers. During the war the Mohne dam had some flak housed in its two towers and another just on the other side of the reservoir. The area is bordered by forest on either side by a forest on both sides.
The water outlets are either side of the dam, on the other side.
Here are two views of the approach run to the dam. While it does look a long way the attack was made in a modified Lancaster bomber, (Type 464), at a height of 60 feet and at 232 miles per hour. Also the gyroscopic effect of a 9000 Lbs cylindrical bomb rotating at 500 RPM also affected the handling of the aircraft. It can make the controls sluggish as the rotating bomb inclines the aircraft to remain flying straight.
The bomb had to released at a distance of 1276 feet from the dam
The Lancaster had to get to the correct height and speed flying along the length of the reservoir which is 6.8 miles long. This takes 1 minute and 45 seconds to cover 6.8 miles however the bomb had to released 1276 feet from the dam.
This also had to be done in the dark, although there was a full moon.
The fall on the 'dry' side of the dam is very steep.
The bomb dropped by F/L John Hopgood, who was the second aircraft to attack the dam, in aircraft for Mother, skipped over the top edge of the dam and landed on the electrical sub station, pictured above, destroying it. This was because on the approach to the Dam, 'M' for Mother, was hit by anti aircraft fire, in the fuel tank, and the wing was immediately engulfed in flame. The upkeep was dropped to try and gain height to allow the crew to bail out safely. The aircraft got to 500 feet. The bomb aimer, tail gunner and wireless operator bailed out however the wireless operator did not survive the jump. Mainly because of how close the ground was.
I could not resist having my photo taken on the scene of a story that I have read about for over 50 years.
These views are from the other side of the dam.
Part of the dams raid that is less well reported on is the effects of the resulting flood. In the aftermath the wall of water which progressed down the valley. Hundreds of civilians and prisoners of war, that were being used as slave workers, were killed in the resulting deluge. This was particularly worse as the local population felt that they were far removed from the war. They may have heard and seen overhead raiders flying to and from their targets, but not much more than that.
Here is a picture of the reconstruction. While many have questioned the effect of the dams raid, in response to the time taken to rebuild them, the amount of man power required to rebuild them could well have been put to better use elsewhere during the war.
This also reflected the importance of the Ruhr area and its disrupted water supply to the German war machine.
