A Brief History
On May 16, 1943, modified British Lancaster bombers undertook Operation Chastise, a bombing raid against dams in the industrial heartland of Germany. Remarkable for the use of “bouncing” bombs that skipped across the water to roll down the inner faces of the dams before detonation, the daring raid breached two of the targeted dams and damaged a third dam, killing about 1,600 people. The RAF lost eight of the 19 bombers used in the raid.
Digging Deeper
Famous for its ingenuity, the “dambusters” raid ranks high among famous bombing raids, which also include:
The Doolittle Raid of 1942 that saw Americans launch 16 B-25 bombers against the Japanese homeland in retaliation for Pearl Harbor, an unprecedented use of large aircraft from ships.
And Operation Jericho conducted by British Mosquito bombers in 1944, that saw Amiens Prison in France, which held 800 resistance fighters likely to be executed, precision bombed in order to release as many prisoners as possible.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Chun, Clayton. The Doolittle Raid 1942: America’s first strike back at Japan. Osprey Publishing, 2006.
Owen, Robert. Breaking the German Dams: A Minute-By-Minute Account of Operation ‘Chastise’ 16-17 May 1943. Naval Institute Press, 2023.
The featured image in this article, a drawing depicting Lancaster bombers attacking German dams during Operation Chastise, subsequently known as the “Dambusters,” was taken from Flickr‘s The Commons. The uploading organization may have various reasons for determining that no known copyright restrictions exist, such as:
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