ALLIES TARGET GERMAN DAMS IN ‘OPERATION CHASTISE’

It was one of most audacious Allied raids of the Second World War. “Operation Chastise” called for the bombing of several large hydroelectric dams in Germany’s Ruhr Valley in an effort to disrupt Nazi industrial production. Conventional weapons, though, couldn’t penetrate the torpedo netting that protected the dams. The answer: specially developed backspun drum bombs, which bounced across the surface of the water (like a skipping stone), spun down a dam wall on contact and then exploded near the base. The payload had to be delivered at a precise altitude, speed and distance from the target. Hand-picked crews from the Royal Air Force 617 Squadron carried out the mission, which required flying at tree-top level. Those involved considered it a one-way ticket. Among the brave crews was Flight Sergeant Ken Brown, from Moose Jaw, who piloted a modified Lancaster bomber that set off just after midnight on this day in 1943. Both the Moehne and Eder dams were successfully breached. But the earthen Sorpe dam remained largely intact even after Brown scored a direct hit on his eighth pass over the mist-shrouded target. Of the mission’s 19 aircraft, eight – carrying 53 men – never returned. The survivors, including Brown, would go down in military history as the famed “Dambusters.”