barrage (F)
diga (I)
presa (S)
Damm (G)
barragem (P)
ruhr area, germany
May 16th and 17th, 2024, marked the 81st anniversary of the Dambusters raids, also known as Operation Chastise. You may not be familiar with it, but if you’re British, you likely are. On May 16, 1943, three waves of British bombers, 19 in all, of the No. 617 Squadron of the Royal Air Force, took off from RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, in the north of England. If you had been watching that evening, you might have noticed that each of the bombers had an unusual, round object hanging below their fuselage and had a little difficulty getting airborne. Those objects were bounding or bouncing bombs, also known as Upkeep bombs. Designed by the British engineer Barnes Wallis, the bombs were designed to bounce along on the surface of the water until they struck their target; sink to the bottom next to their target; and then blow up, with the proximity to the target increasing the effectiveness of the bomb. Getting the bomb next to the target was crucial; otherwise, the bomb would have to be too big and couldn’t be flown to the bombing site.
The Ruhr valley was the base of Germany’s steel and armaments industries: Essen, Düsseldorf, Gelsenkirchen, Dortmund, and Duisburg. But the bombers who took off on May 16th were not targeting those factories. Rather, their targets were three dams in the region: the Sorpe, an earthen dam; the Möhne, a gravity dam held in place by its own weight; and the Eder. If those dams were breached and the region flooded, 45 power plants could be destroyed, effectively cutting power to the German war machine. The British had been working on this plan for several years.
The specially formed No. 617 squadron was led by a 24-year-old British pilot named Guy Gibson, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for the mission and completed over 170 combat missions before being killed in battle in September, 1944. To put his service into perspective, during World War II, most American pilots who had flown 25 missions were considered “tour expired”. Gibson’s aircraft was the first to attack the Möhne but it took the bombs of five more aircraft in his wave before the dam gave way after midnight. The other aircraft waves targeted the Eder, which collapsed around two in the morning on May 17th. The Sorpe dam was attacked but remained intact. Of the 133 aircrew that took part in in the mission, 53 men were killed and three became prisoners of war. On the ground, almost 1,300 civilians were killed in the resulting flooding, including nearly 500 Ukranian women serving as conscripted laborers.
Of the 130 million cubic meters of water the Möhne Dam had contained, most of it escaped in the twelve hours after the breach. Two power stations were swept away. More than 150 million cubic meters of water escaped from the Eder dam and four power stations were put out of action. Officially, Germany stated that 11 factories were destroyed and 114 damaged; 25 road or rail bridges were wiped out; and numerous power stations, pumping stations, and water and gas facilities were affected.
How successful was Operation Chastise? While it didn’t affect industrial output permanently, it certainly disrupted it and the flooding disrupted agricultural output and killed livestock at a time when Germany was lacking resources to feed its people. About 30,000 workers, many forced labourers, were diverted from other military projects, such as completing the Atlantic Wall, the coastal fortifications designed to prevent an Allied invasion from England, across the English Channel, to complete repairs. And additional military resources were moved to the Ruhr area to defend it, potentially leaving other areas more vulnerable. The mission had huge propoganda value, showing that the Allies could complete such a dangerous mission. But the impact of Operation Chastise on civilians remains troubling. The bombing of such targets as dams with likely civilian casualties raises serious international humanitarian law issues.