Well, firstly Karmy I'm surprised you haven't seen the B&W film of the raid, but the story is as well known to any 6yr old schoolboy here as Robin Hood and King Arthur. Its part of the folklore and psyche of the British people.

Anyway, let me be a bit controversial and make a few observations about the dam raids and maybe start a useful discussion with some different insights from abroad.

Be aware I'm not decrying the skill or bravery of the aircrews, or being in anyway disrespectful, but perhaps their efforts were somewhat minimised by policy from above.

Firstly it suggests to me that there was a serious flaw in Harris's command, we had shown with this raid, (albeit costly on crews) and the Mosquito attacks on jails and valve (toob for the N.Americans) factories that absolute precision could be obtained and at a level that today's smart bombs can just achieve.

However, Harris continued to flatten housing estates and cities, not until much later in the war did someone finally take control of him and insist on military and manufacturing targets. Albert Speer records being only mildly worried about British bombing but very concerned with the US effort which did impinge on manufacture of essential material.

It would seem that even Mr Churchill had no control over Harris and good job we won or else perhaps Harris would have been on trial too.

So the dams; was this a useful contribution to the war effort, or a propaganda/morale boosting exercise; certainly it came at a time when the British public desperately needed something to cheer about and Mr Churchill desperately needed to keep them on-side.

Incidentally, do not view the popular and offered image of Churchill as a kindly and rotund old uncle; he was as crafty as a cart load of monkeys, devious, manipulating, bombastic, dictatorial and the match of Hitler and Joe Stalin put together.

Just the right man for the job.

After all the effort put in by Barnes Wallis, knowing that explosive containment was the key to breaching the dams, we wonder why bouncing bombs were also simply thrown against the Sorpe dam. This structure being a massive earthwork and also flexible therefore, I'm sure Wallis's mathematics showed this to be futile.

In fact the Sorpe, because of this construction, and being shallower than the other conventional dams would probably need a Grand Slam very precisely placed to be at risk and failing a nuclear strike it would be impossible to place such a device correctly today even with a guidance head.

As for the other two, the damage to the German war industry, and some agriculture, was actually minimal in the cold light of day. Albert Speer had it all repaired and working in 3 months.

Why did we never follow-up with either Mosquito nuisance raids or a regular bombing run every few weeks to continually disrupt the repair work?

Could it be that the low strategic value of the dams raid was known beforehand and that further effort was nugatory suggesting that the whole plan was a propaganda mission but veiled under the pretence of war shortening industrial damage?

I don't know, but something doesn't exactly add up.

The only lasting effect of the raid was the manufacturing effort of a heap of AA guns and the deployment of some 11,000 teenagers and old men to man AA defences around these and other dams in Germany, and that isn't a very good trade for the men and material we put into the original raid.

I can imagine someone rushed into Albert Speer's in the early hours and said:

"Al, wake up, those bloody British have blown a hole in the Mohne and Eder dams."

"Bugger. . . . . . ." "I'll get some brickies with a bit of scaffolding down there tomorrow afternoon."

That's being a tad flippant but you get the idea.

So, dear reader, was the dams raid the success it is made out to be, and to consider that we really need to know what the real objective was, but no one in the know is saying or indeed alive now.

It certainly was in the discharge of the specific task given to RAF Bomber Command, but in the greater scope of things, you decide.

R.