Dambusters

[Gob]

Two of the surviving Dambuster airmen have attended a ceremony after a flypast to mark the 70th anniversary of the World War II raid on German dams.



Hundreds of onlookers gathered as a Lancaster bomber flew over Derwent reservoir - one of the practice sites used ahead of the top-secret mission.

More than a third of the men never returned from the raids, when they had to fly just 60ft above ground.

RAF Scampton later hosted a sunset service.

The RAF Battle of Britain Memorial Flight and 617 Squadron flew over the dam in Derbyshire's Hope Valley on Thursday lunchtime.

The ceremony, service and second flypast at RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire where, 70 years ago, 19 Lancaster bombers took off for their daring mission.

Only three of the original 133-strong squadron are still alive. Two of them, 94-year-old Les Munro and 91-year-old George "Johnny" Johnson attended the Lincoln service on Thursday evening.

Squadron leader Munro had travelled from New Zealand for the event.

He said he made the 12,000-mile trip "just to renew old acquaintances".

More than 1,300 people were killed in the Dambuster raids when bombs were dropped on German dams and flooded the Ruhr valley.

There were a number of events taking place around the country on Thursday to mark the raids of 16-17 May 1943.

At the National Memorial Arboretum in Alrewas, Staffordshire, more than 10,500 crests with messages of support were planted at the site's Armed Forces Memorial.

Two thousand people turned up to the temporary tribute.

Throughout the day, the RAF was live tweeting the original wireless telegraphy signals from the raid, with the final one reading: "06:15 Townsend's Lancaster AJ-O landing at RAF Scampton the last aircraft to return safely. Operation Chastise is over."

On Friday events are taking place at the Eder Dam in Germany, which was struck and breached by the bombers.

"I think events like this make us remember the sacrifice those young lads made during the raid", said 66-year-old well-wisher Roy Taylor.

"They never got the recognition they deserved I don't think."

The Dambusters raid was carried out by 133 airmen, flying 19 Lancaster bombers armed with the "bouncing bombs" designed by Sir Barnes Wallis.

Dr Wallis's daughter - who attended the service at RAF Scampton - described him as a "man of peace" but said he acted out of a sense of patriotic duty.

"He was not a man of war and that is often not, I think, properly understood," Mary Stopes-Roe told the BBC. "But if you have to defend something you have to defend it and that's it, you do your duty."

He was "devastated" when he heard how many airmen had been lost, she said.

Compared to today's pilots, who must fly 250ft above ground, they flew incredibly low at 60ft. They also had to fly in the dark for the night-time raids.

They flew so low, according to historian Dan Snow, that one hit the sea, tearing off the bomb carried by the plane. Another flew into high voltage electricity cables and was engulfed in flames.

Codenamed Operation Chastise, 56 of the men who took off on the mission did not return.

Out of 19 bombers, eight were shot down. Three men were captured and 53 were killed.

Eight-year-old Jack Porter, who travelled with his father from Manchester to watch the flypast, said: "I can't believe they flew so low in the dark. They were very brave.

"It was brilliant to see the Lancaster today."

The military impact of the Dambusters raid, immortalised in a 1955 film starring Michael Redgrave, has been disputed.

But Clive Rowley, a former commanding officer of the RAF's Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, said it was an economic disaster for Hitler's Germany.

"In that sense it was truly militarily important, strategically important, and I think that is more modern research that has uncovered that and hasn't been widely recognised until now."

The mission's last surviving pilot, Squadron Leader Munro, told the BBC: "I believe from an operational point of view they were very successful. They had achieved the two major primary targets."

Squadron 617's bombs breached the Mohne and Eder dams, while the Sorpe dam was damaged.

Writing for the BBC news website, Dan Snow said: "No raid mounted by so few aircraft had ever caused such extensive material damage.

"It did not bring German war production to a permanent halt, but nobody had expected it to."

Canadian rear gunner Fred Sutherland, 89, and George Johnson are the only other two surviving members of 617 Squadron.

Of more than 7,000 Lancaster bombers built, only two airworthy planes remain in existence.

[Rick]

IMHO the Lancaster was the best strategic bomber of WWII...

[MajGenl.Meade]

Certainly the prettiest.

[rubato]

They made quite a splash.


yrs,
rubato

[Jarlaxle]

IMHO the Lancaster was the best strategic bomber of WWII...

No. Just.........no!

[Gob]

[Rick]

IMHO the Lancaster was the best strategic bomber of WWII...

No. Just.........no!

That's yer opinion, yet you offer nothin else...

[Jarlaxle]

B-29 Superfortress. 'Nuff said.

[Rick]

B-29 Superfortress. 'Nuff said.

Bull, they were so unreliable we had to capture Iwo Jima so they would have a place to land on their way back from Japan.

3 were left in Russia, they started to copy them then said piss on it.

Try again...

[Joe Guy]

Lancaster




B-29 Superfortress



The Lancaster is much more lean & mean looking, in my opinion.

[MajGenl.Meade]

I think it unlikely that the B-29 SF could have skipped bombs against dams but as a bomber it probably had advantages over the Lanc - like better firepower and payload. But the Lanc was more versatile and a beautiful design (to look at)

[Lord Jim]

In addition to fire and payload, it B-29 SF was also faster and had about twice the flying range...

But I agree that the Lancaster was a more elegant looking plane...

Also the B-29 was designed much later and introduced relatively late in the war; it was the primary bomber of the Korean War...

Comparing the Lancaster to a plane of the same generation, (the B-17) the Lancaster is definitely the superior plane, so for most of the war the Brit's had the better bomber....

They are comparable in almost every respect (size, weight, speed etc.) except payload....

The Lancaster could carry 14,000 pounds, the B-17 only 6K...(The Lancaster also had over 500 miles more in range)

It terms of size to bomb load capacity, the Lancaster was a marvel of efficiency; in addition to having more than twice the payload capacity of the nearly-identically sized B-17, it had 2/3 the capacity of the B-29 (14K versus 20K) despite the fact that the B-29 weighed twice as much as the Lancaster...

Here's a link to a great spreadsheet for anyone interested in making detailed comparisons between these planes, (or just about any other WW II era bomber)

http://www.historylink101.com/ww2-planes/a-stats.htm

If you're a hard core WW II plane buff you'll really enjoy it...

And also, if you know next to nothing about the subject, the info is so detailed and well organized, it can have you sounding like an expert in less than a minute...*








*worked for me....

[dales]

But....but...but...but....ya mean everything I saw on 12 0'clock high was a fraud?

Oh the huge manatee.

[dales]

Lest we forget the Axis

[Jarlaxle]

B-29 Superfortress. 'Nuff said.

Bull, they were so unreliable we had to capture Iwo Jima so they would have a place to land on their way back from Japan.

3 were left in Russia, they started to copy them then said piss on it.

Try again...

Actually, the Soviets DID copy the B-29...they called it the Tu-4 (NATO reporting name: Bull), and built 850 of them. They were in service until the early 1960's, replaced by the Tu-95 "Bear".

Compared to the Lancaster, the Superfort was 70MPH faster, and flew 10,000' higher and 700 miles further while carrying 6000lbs more bombs. (Note: the B-29 first flew in 1942!)

[Jarlaxle]

In addition to fire and payload, it B-29 SF was also faster and had about twice the flying range...

But I agree that the Lancaster was a more elegant looking plane...

Also the B-29 was designed much later and introduced relatively late in the war; it was the primary bomber of the Korean War...

The Superfort was designed ONE YEAR after the Lancaster!

Comparing the Lancaster to a plane of the same generation, (the B-17) the Lancaster is definitely the superior plane, so for most of the war the Brit's had the better bomber....

The B-17 was actually an old design...the first one flew in 1935! The first Liberator flew in 1939.

They are comparable in almost every respect (size, weight, speed etc.) except payload....

The Lancaster could carry 14,000 pounds, the B-17 only 6K...(The Lancaster also had over 500 miles more in range)

It terms of size to bomb load capacity, the Lancaster was a marvel of efficiency; in addition to having more than twice the payload capacity of the nearly-identically sized B-17, it had 2/3 the capacity of the B-29 (14K versus 20K) despite the fact that the B-29 weighed twice as much as the Lancaster...

Yes...when you have next to no defensive armament, you can carry more bombs! (The Lancaster had two or three gun positions, the B-24 had six, the B-17 and B-29 ten.) Notably, the Lancaster had no guns able to shoot below the aircraft! Also note: the B-17 could carry 8500lbs on shorter runs...longer missions lost capacity because of bomb-bay fuel tanks.

[Lord Jim]

(Note: the B-29 first flew in 1942!)

Yes, but....

The aircraft first flew on September 21, 1942, and testing continued through next year....

The first B-29s arrived at Allied airfields in India and China in April 1944.

http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/mil ... /p/b29.htm

[Jarlaxle]

Yes: because of demand for heavy bombers & the need to keep building the B-17's and B-24's (remember: "Germany first"), the changeover to making Superforts was slow, because they didn't want to stop production for the changeover.

[Burning Petard]

I note this Superfortress is flying in Texas in April '23. The picture on Doc's site shows a white patch on top near the nose. On a different picture near the beginning of this thread there is a picture a different plane that shows a similar white patch, but it is near the wings.

Can someone tell this ignorant non-wing-nut just what the function is for the white area?

snailgate