617 Dam buster AEC Matador Sold

[Phil Waterman]

I have always enjoyed the original movie about the Dam Buster and over the years I have seen bits and pieces in various books about this development effort. One problem with many books is that they take bits and pieces from different sources and connect them correctly or incorrectly. In doing this they sometimes carry forward previously misleading statements. One of the things I enjoy about MLU is that people making post seem to make an effort to document information to original sources and when not sure of a source they say so. All of this is rather interesting for the internet. Having said this here are some more bits to add to the Dam Buster discussion they are from a Large Format beautifully illustrated aircraft book THE GREAT BOOK OF WORLD WAR II AIRPLANES published in 1984, and is actually a compilation of books about individual aircraft.

The first photo is of a Mosquito dropping a barrel or sphere shaped bomb low over water so that it skips, there is a similar sequence in the original movie, but the text describes this as development of an anti shipping bomb. Later in the book it covers the Lancaster bomber and includes the drawings shown of the Dam Buster bomb system, this is the earliest write up that I remember as the Lancaster section of the book was first printed in 1982.

From another source which I have not been able to find again was a statement that a Ford engine possibly a flathead V8, was used to spin up the bomb. Could this possibly been from an old thread on MLU?


Cheers Phil