The 'Insane' British Bouncing Bomb That Skipped Across Water To Blow Up Dams скачать в хорошем качестве

The 'Insane' British Bouncing Bomb That Skipped Across Water To Blow Up Dams

The 'Insane' British Bouncing Bomb That Skipped Across Water To Blow Up Dams - Barnes Wallis Dam Busters On the night of 16-17 May 1943, nineteen Lancaster bombers attacked Germany's Ruhr dams with a weapon that shouldn't have existed — a 9,250 lb spinning cylinder that bounced across water. Two dams were breached, releasing over 130 million cubic metres of floodwater into Germany's industrial heartland. The weapon — codenamed "Upkeep" — was the creation of Barnes Wallis, a Vickers engineer who spent two years fighting military bureaucracy to prove that a backspin-stabilised mine could skip over torpedo nets, sink against a dam wall, and detonate at depth with devastating effect. Senior RAF commanders called it "tripe of the wildest description." His own employer tried to stop him. But Wallis was right — and Operation Chastise became the most celebrated precision bombing raid of the Second World War. KEY SPECIFICATIONS Upkeep Bouncing Bomb: • Weight: 9,250 lbs (4,196 kg) • Explosive: 6,600 lbs Torpex • Diameter: 50 inches • Length: 60 inches • Backspin: 500 RPM • Release altitude: 60 feet • Release speed: ~230 mph • Distance from target: 425-475 yards Operation Chastise: • Date: 16-17 May 1943 • Aircraft: 19 Avro Lancaster B.III Specials • Targets: Möhne, Eder, Sorpe dams • Dams breached: 2 (Möhne, Eder) • Aircraft lost: 8 • Aircrew killed: 53 • Aircrew captured: 3 ═══════════════════════════════════════ SOURCES AND FURTHER READING • Sweetman, John. "The Dambusters Raid" (1982, revised 2012) — the definitive academic account • Hastings, Max. "Chastise: The Dambusters Story 1943" (2019) — major modern reassessment • Holland, James. "Dam Busters: The Race to Smash the Dams, 1943" (2012) • Blank, Ralf — German historian whose research established casualty figures including forced labourer deaths • National Archives, Kew — AIR 14/595 contains Harris's "tripe" annotation • Imperial War Museum — Barnes Wallis papers and Upkeep specimens • RAF Museum, Hendon — 617 Squadron archives Note on casualty figures: Estimates vary across sources. The figure of approximately 1,650 deaths (including over 1,000 foreign forced labourers) is based on Ralf Blank's research but remains contested. Note on water volumes: The Möhne reservoir held approximately 134 million cubic metres; the Eder held approximately 202 million cubic metres. Release volumes and flood statistics vary by source.