[Lang]

From what I have read (once again from untested articles) the Mosquito was the first choice for the raid but size of the weapon made it all too difficult. I think the shots in the original movie of the Mosquito were of scaled down "proof of concept" experiments. There were many, many more experiments and tests carried out than the dramatised version shown in the original movie or mentioned in the book.

The Americans became very good at skip bombing from B25 Mitchells in the Pacific on anti-shipping attacks. They used standard 250lb and 500lb bombs and dropped from 50-100 feet. There are many photos and movies of them making successful attacks on Japanese shipping.

Of course this would not have worked on the dams which required underwater explosions.

As a comment I think the back-spin was totally to do with stabilizing the weapon during flight and bouncing. The "crawl up to the wall" theory would not work as it was spinning in a direction to take it back, not forward, once it hit the wall or bottom.