Operation Chastise And The Dambusters Essay

In the waking age of a war-induced industrial bomb, Germany began to to create and use dams to allow an area of a town so it can be used for factories. What this meant for the Nazi’s was that wherever the dams were, they had more land to for weapon factories. The Nazi’s were also very aware that putting important factories in the canyon below a dam poses a huge threat is the dam were to be breached. This is precisely where Operation Chastise and the “Dambusters” found their objectives. If they are able to breach the dam by some means, multiple factories and villages would be destroyed and rendered inaccessible. However, there were many struggles with figuring out how such a feat would be possible. Operation Chastise was one of the hardest aerial …show more content…
The men in the 617 Squadron were to fly directly at the dams in the objective from a height of merely 60 feet. At this height, if the Lancaster were to be forced into an emergency sharp turn, the wing closest to the water would only be a mere 5 feet above the water. On the approach to the dam they had to be flying at exactly 220 mph, and release the bombs when between 400-450 yards away form the dams. This was a feat in itself due to the fact that the Lancaster can cover that 50 yard gap in fractions of a second when traveling at 220 mph.To add to the danger of what the pilots were being asked to do, they were to conduct this operation in the pitch blackness of the night, making it very hard to see how close they were to the ground. They had to solely rely on their altimeter, knowing that if they were to low the released bomb could bounce back up and destroy the Lancaster. (Here is an example of what that would have looked like, however with a different aircraft. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCGpzRzY7fY This clip is of a US A-26 trying to perform the Dambusters bomb drop at an even lower altitude.) Finally, to add in even more danger, on the night of May 16th these pilots had to deal with enemy anti-aircraft and variety of other flak …show more content…
Comically enough, Wallis then thought of a brilliant idea in which he even stated seemed “childishly simple”. Though a torpedo would have worked perfect, the Germans had already put up a series of torpedo nets to ensure that was not possible. Instead, he took the idea of skipping a rock along a bed of water and decided to create -a bomb that was able to do the exact same. The development of this bouncing bomb was code-named “Upkeep”. Wallis began right away to develop a bomb that would do what he wanted and obey the laws of physics. It was through all of these careful calculations that Wallis came up with the perfect dimensions and delivery of the