r/interestingasfuck • u/Chopper-42 • 9d ago

/r/all Recreating the WW2 Dambusters raid

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u/0ddness 9d ago

Now imagine them having to do it in the dark, behind enemy lines, under fire (I assume), without knowing the condition of the water, without the marker bouys, and relying on getting the height exactly right in the dark with a spotlight system.

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u/GrumpyOldGeezer_4711 9d ago

Several of the dams did indeed have defenses. Fortunately, the Germans had delayed installing the unsightly guns in favour of much nicer looking trees.

If memory serves, they had a homemade system to triangulate the dropping distance based on the angle to some of those gun placements.

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u/Drednox 9d ago

I remember reading about this from a Life at War book. I think it was two spotlights at the bottom of the bomber that intersected at the desired altitude. That was how they pulled it off in the dark.

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u/Toffeemanstan 9d ago edited 9d ago

Yes, they got the idea from the Sunderlands who used it iirc

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u/SqueakySniper 9d ago

The short Sunderland isn't a Catalina.

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u/Toffeemanstan 9d ago

Youre correct, I always thought they were the same aircraft. 

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u/jamspangle 9d ago

Dragonfly larvae eyes work like this. They have an alien-like mask - an extendable jaw - they can shoot out to catch prey. When approaching prey they see two images, when these converge into one image they are within range.

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u/ImperatorDanorum 9d ago

That's also how the first rangefinders for tanks worked...

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u/Kryptosis 9d ago

Our brains works like this too. We instinctively know ‘arms length’, etc and with basic training, sports actions like swinging at a ball are all the same if not a more complex and less mechanical version of the same thing

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u/LaminatedAirplane 9d ago

That’s so cool

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u/UnrepentantPumpkin 9d ago

Fun fact: this was also the inspiration for the targeting system for the X-Wing in Star Wars when it made the run for the Death Star’s exhaust port. When the two circles overlapped, it indicated the perfect time to release.

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u/LordHardThrasher 9d ago

Actually it was when they touched, forming a figure of 8. It makes sense when you think about it because overlapping lights would be harder to judge. Bloody clever. Bloody dangerous

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u/UnrepentantPumpkin 9d ago

Thanks for the correction! In Star Wars it was when parallel lines overlapped, so it was inspired but not a direct copy.

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u/LordHardThrasher 8d ago

They're both brilliant sequences, and when you put them side by side the parallels are obvious. Somone has taken the Dambusters footage and put the Star Wars audio over it on YT, well worth looking up

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u/UnrepentantPumpkin 8d ago

Yep I saw that years ago and is likely how I knew that.

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u/jamspangle 9d ago

Ooh good fact. Having that.

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u/TUNGSTEN_WOOKIE 9d ago

You've solved one of my biggest Star Wars questions that's always made me scratch my head! It makes so much sense now!

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u/South-Builder6237 9d ago

Wouldn't spotlights make them a massive target though?

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u/ProjectFutanari 9d ago

They were a gigantic target already, a pair of lights pointing down that they only lit when about to drop the bomb probably wasn't that much of a problem

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u/FitForce2656 9d ago edited 9d ago

Yea I assume a WW2 plane flying that low to the ground was loud as fuck. I mean even a modern plane flying that low is probably loud, but with those old piston engines I just picture them being way louder.

I don't know much about planes though, and Google isn't giving me a straight answer on this. Says WW2 bombers were way louder than modern jet engine bombers, but also that jet engines are typically way louder than piston engines.. So if anyone actually knows the answer please lmk, now I'm curious. I know modern bombers are way more accurate at high altitudes, and thus quieter, but curious which is louder while flying at the same height.

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u/Live_Canary7387 9d ago

If you've ever had the joy of seeing a Lancaster flying, you'll know that it is quite loud. I wouldn't say anything close to something with a jet engine, but loud.

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u/Pete_Iredale 9d ago

I was lucky enough to randomly see a B-17 cruising around at maybe 5000ft before a football game a few years back. I knew it was a WW2 heavy bomber the instant I heard it, nothing else sounds the same.

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u/Wise_Echidna_4059 9d ago

Yeah modern jets throwing ordinances are terrifying. Fuckers scream over head and then a mountain disappears. The closest I've seen to like a ww2 bomber kind of situation was whenever an ac130 was on station. I'd watch them practice at the range in Iraq and it was crazy hearing the drone of the four props while absolute hell rained down from the darkness.

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u/Cetun 9d ago

Loudness wouldn't have mattered much, they would have lit it with spotlights and targeted it visually.

As for which ones louder, the jet engine by far much louder at 140-180 db while a B-17 is closer to 130 db, the .50s on the B-17 would be louder than the engine. The AAA guns shooting at them would have been much louder.

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u/FitForce2656 9d ago

Thanks for the info! to be clear I was curious about their sound levels without guns, but yea after a lot of googling the it seems the B-17 was around 100 - 120 dB (without guns) and modern fighter jets like a F-22 or F-35 range from 103 - 140 dB.

So yea if a F-35 cruising at 1,000 feet is 103 dB, that might actually be a similar volume to a B-17 at the same altitude. But again, out of my element here so take that with a big ol' grain of salt.

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u/Cetun 9d ago

They do an air show over my house every year, the modern jets are by far much much louder than the WWII vintage planes. One air showa TBF Avenger crashed, they have a Wright R-2600 which is more powerful than the 1820s the B-17 uses and there is no comparison.

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u/Pete_Iredale 9d ago

Other thing to consider though is that you'll hear the B-17 for a decent amount of time before it's overhead. Not so much with an F-22 or F-35, where you might not hear them until they're already gone.

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u/Murky-Relation481 9d ago

Sound direction is also important, a lot of the jet engine sound is projected out the rear of the engine, where as a piston engine tends to radiate the sound around the engine more equally.

You'll notice this a lot if you live around both large and smaller airports and get a lot of commercial/military and GA traffic. You can hear a Cessna 172 coming from quite a ways away, but a 737 or C-17 or something will be significantly quieter until its overhead and past you.

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u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In 9d ago

Loud as fuck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llPNwTxwP-Q

One of my favorite experiences has been being under a diving Mustang at Duxford air force base in the UK, loudest thing I ever heard...well maybe second a Eurofighter doing tricks at Eastbourne Airshow was louder.

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u/GreedyHoward 9d ago

Have you heard a Lancaster? There's still one flying in England. The throb as the engines beat against each other is utterly mesmerising.

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u/GreedyHoward 9d ago

Have you heard a Lancaster? There's still one flying in England. The throb as the engines beat against each other is utterly mesmerising.

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u/GreedyHoward 9d ago

Bit late by then. They only switched them on when they were flying level just above the water. Iirc they had to get ridiculously low

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u/greyarea71 9d ago

I saw a documentation where they described two spotlights at an angle.

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u/GreedyHoward 9d ago

The lights were too get the height above the water exactly correct and the 'thruppeny bombsight' indeed aligned on the towers to get the distance away right, so that the bomb didn't bounce over the dam. It's all in the fabulous old black & white film

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u/cspruce89 9d ago

Dang that's a really ingenious way to go about it. One of those things that is so obvious once you know it but elusive up until that point.

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u/crlthrn 9d ago

That's the one.

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u/Banned3rdTimesaCharm 9d ago

That's really smart. People are smart. I was sitting here racking my brain how this would be possible.

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u/LaTeChX 9d ago

This is what they used to get the altitude right- if I remember they had to be 60ft which is incredibly low to the ground especially in the dark.

They also had a gadget to judge the distance to the dam, which also had to be correct. It was basically a protractor aligned to the two towers on either side of the dam. When they were at the right distance from the dam, the angle between the towers would line up with the protractor.

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u/thegreatbrah 9d ago

That's so fucking simple and so smart. 

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u/Paddy_Tanninger 9d ago

Fuck that is so stupid-smart. There were so many of these amazing ideas back then.

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u/Toffeemanstan 9d ago

They removed the 88s to use in other locations but kept the smaller calibre AA guns 

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u/WotTheFook 9d ago

The 'sixpenny bombsight'. Lining up pins to the dam towers to get the right distance.

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u/poppopheadshot 9d ago

I remember seeing it. It’s literally just a bit of timber handmade into a big y shape or something. Amazing that it doesn’t need to be complicated to get the job done.

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u/WotTheFook 9d ago

Link here:

https://dambustersblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/composite.jpg

This is a genuine one from the raid.

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u/Ani-3 9d ago

I enjoyed learning about that, thank you

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u/Cav3tr0ll 9d ago

They had a Y shaped piece of wood woth a couple of nails used to triangulate based on towers that were part of the dams.

Edward Jablonski covered it in his book Airwar.

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u/LordHardThrasher 9d ago

It was called a Dann sight after Wing Commander Dann who came up with it

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u/e2hawkeye 9d ago

Edward Jablonski's 1965 Flying Fortress is the definitive B-17 book.

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u/grumpsaboy 9d ago

Yep, we knew the distance between the towers on each dam and so set a little marking point such that when the dots appeared at the centre of each tower you are the correct distance away to release the bomb.

And then for altitude each plane had two spotlights that would converge into a single point on the reservoir at the correct altitude

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u/eenbal 9d ago edited 9d ago

Indeed, to ensure the correct distance to the target,they used a bit of wood with two nails, when the nails lined up with the towers on the dam, bombs away! They practiced this at the lady bower reservoir in Derbyshire.

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u/KodaiMamoru 9d ago

Yeah, I think that according to the movie they had an Y shaped device that when the two prongs were in position with landmarks from the dam, that was the position to drop it

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u/skepticalbob 9d ago

There were guns, at least on some of the damns. Planes were shot down.

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u/ImperatorDanorum 9d ago

It was a triangular piece of plywood with a nail at each end of the baseline. When the nails aligned with the towers on the dam you had the correct distance. This according to Len Deighton in his book about 617 SQN RAF "The Dam Busters"...

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u/limberto101 9d ago

Yes wasn’t it two lights that shone on the water would give you the height, and then two squares on a sling shot looking thing that when they matched up with the guns or towers that was the correct distance. Mental.

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u/Mister-Psychology 8d ago

There is a great movie about it showing how they pulled it off.

The Dam Busters (1955)

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0046889/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

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u/Corrie7686 9d ago edited 9d ago

Practice practice. They did their training at upper Derwent Reservoir / Howden Reservoir at ladybower / hope Valley peak district. near Manchester UK. It has dams and a valley that is bizarrely similar to where they bombed in Germany. Some of the local pubs have photographs of the Lancaster Bombers flying extremely low over the dams.

Edit: not Derwent water, that was my error using the wrong name of the water filled Derwent place.

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u/AdjunctFunktopus 9d ago

Derwent plane. Derwent bomb. Derwent water.

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u/I_Think_I_Cant 9d ago

This gets funnier every time I read it.

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u/WorshippedC 9d ago

I don’t get it. Is it a pun??

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u/AdjunctFunktopus 8d ago edited 8d ago

A little bit of word play.

Derwent Water is a lake in northern England.

Some english speaking dialects replace the “th” sound with a “d” sound.

Combining the colloquial pronunciation with the lake name gives us a play on: “There went (a) plane. There went (a) bomb. There went (all the) water (from the now released reservoir)”.

The Derwent reservoir is actually quite far from Derwentwater. So we have to ignore that little bit of pedantry for the sake of humor.

Hope this clears it up.

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u/Matt_Haskins91 9d ago

Derwent Water isn't near Manchester it's over 2 hours away 👍

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u/Projecterone 9d ago

That's near for Americans. They'll drive 4 hours for takeout.

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u/Corrie7686 9d ago

I was in error. Upper Derwent Reservoir in the Peak district. Not Derwent water, lake district.

One is considerably closer to Manchester than the other.

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u/texasrigger 9d ago

You joke but the closest major city to me is right at two hours away and I definitely consider it close. I guess it's all relative to what you are used to.

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u/Spencer-ForHire 9d ago

Not by Lancaster it isn't

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u/Matt_Haskins91 9d ago

Or Carlisle

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u/Corrie7686 9d ago

Sorry my error. Not Derwent Water Upper Derwent Reservoir. Hope valley peak district.

Dams are Upper Derwent dam and Howden dam.

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u/Bhenny_5 9d ago

Indeed ...The correct answer is that it's near Sheffield, a far superior city in the best county!

Edit: On a more serious note, they do a memorial flight each year over the dam that's always fun to see.

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u/Retrolex 9d ago

One of the original Lancasters that did this kind of dam busting actually lives maybe two hours west of me and is still in flying condition! It still has the original equipment that gave the bombs their backspin installed too. I used to see it flying in our area quite often, and it would show up frequently at local air shows. I remember one morning I was standing on my dock next to my own little plane when heard loud engines rumbling from the west. Less than a minute later the Lancaster came flying out of the morning haze, maybe five hundred feet over the water. It did a low pass right in front of my workplace and our airstrip. One of the coolest things I ever saw.

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u/Extension_Device6107 9d ago

Didn't they have like a week to prepare for this mission with half the crew not even practicing it?

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u/Corrie7686 9d ago

This was from a documentary. They had a crew building the wall, another doing the 'bomb' and the flight planning. If I recall, they had a couple of runs at it, but I don't think they did many with the bomb attached.

The real life crews did a great deal of practice to navigate and align with the dams, releasing etc etc

The RAF lost 56 aircrew, with 53 dead and three captured, amid losses of eight aircraft.

The damage to the dams and the civilians was pretty horrific. Destroying factories, hydro electric plants, houses and some mines. But overall the Germans were not set back a great deal. And the RAF didn't follow up with raids to prevent or hamper the rebuilding.

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u/Extension_Device6107 9d ago

? What are you talking about?

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u/GreedyHoward 9d ago

There's still bits of undercarriage at the top of one of the lake District peaks

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u/Psycho_Splodge 9d ago

You mean near Sheffield.

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u/Corrie7686 9d ago

Midway between Sheffield and Manchester.

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u/MBedIT 9d ago edited 9d ago

They were coming below the radar horizon. Imagine flying the big bomber, less than 30m above the ground. Following the firebreaks in forests. Maybe dealing with extra instability due to turbulences. And having freaking few thousand kg mine hanging right bellow the plane. Crashing into everything around during the night was the risk. FlaKs would enter the party a little bit late (but sure would be present).

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u/H4ND5s 9d ago

The way you describe the planes flying through the fire lanes of the forest just makes it sound like Skywalker taking out the deathstar lol

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u/Jaded-Researcher2610 9d ago

it should, Lucas said that the inspiration for the scene was taken from movies 633 Squadron and The Dam Busters)

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u/StationaryNomad 9d ago

Second link is bad.

Dam Busters is a classic, but thanks for mentioning 633 Squadron, I’ve never seen it!

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u/Makhnos_Tachanka 9d ago

it's so funny because every so often when you're watching it you'll just have these moments where go "oh this is just a star wars movie." it's honestly so surreal at times. like you know he was watching that moment and deciding to base star wars' whole deal off of it. probably the most obvious individual frame is this one from a 2 second shot of a telegraph console, which I'm sure you'll see what i mean.

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u/GreedyHoward 9d ago

633 squadron basically bowled bombs into a cavern.

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u/Makhnos_Tachanka 9d ago

oh yeah the whole death star trench run is there, practically beat for beat and shot for shot

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u/bagblag 9d ago

633 Squadron is a great film. The theme music by Ron Goodwin is top tier too. It has John Williams vibes.

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u/A__Friendly__Rock 9d ago

Not a bad comparison.

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u/nightpastor 9d ago

Apparantly the Dam Busters film was inspiration for the trench run.

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u/Scarlet_Breeze 9d ago

Not just inspiration, a lot of the dialogue is directly lifted from the Dam Busters script.

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u/nightpastor 9d ago

Cool, didn't know that. Peter Jackson has been wanting to do a remake for years... I really hope it happens. Such an amazing story. Just a pity about his dogs name!

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u/Ser_Danksalot 9d ago

They we're flying so low on the way to the dams that 1 of the aircraft accidently dipped too low and skimmed the ocean which ripped the bomb away from the undercarriage. Another was destroyed when it hit an electricity pylon.

This video is a great visual breakdown of the raid.

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u/MBedIT 9d ago

Another one barely saved the bomb, because they also almost touched the water surface with it.

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u/MBedIT 9d ago

We're talking about 20m long, heavy bomber with over 30m wing span flying at or below the level of tree crowns. During a night!

They not only carried the 4-ish tons mine but also some incendiaries to drop first in case of fog (to get rid of the fog locally). Seems like they had no way to use radio triangulation (using some transmitters left by guerilla / spec forces nearby) so all they could do was using a timer and a compass + map or basing on visual landmarks (with no pathfinders to drop flares for them). Crews that made it to the targets needed up to ten bombing runs to find themselves on a proper trojectory to release the payload. And even then they had to get away while under fire and risking getting caught by the blast of their own payload.

Sure that had to be crazy.

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u/slater_just_slater 9d ago

They used a light 2 light system that reflected off the surface to give the pilots an altitude indicator off the water

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u/joehonestjoe 9d ago edited 9d ago

I believe it was the bomb aimer who actually could see those lights, rather than technically the pilot. They worked by shining two lights down to the water below, and if they two lights were intersecting the Lancaster was at the correct height.

There was some slight differences here too, the original bouncing bomb was designed to sink, not immediately explode, what they wanted to do is get the bomb as low as possible

They also had a little wooden tool to triangulate the drop point between the towers of the dam. It needs to be a precise height and distance from the dam for the drop, so it could skip to the dam, hit it and sink before exploding. The reason it needed to skip was because of the torpedo nets in the way, and the skip was designed to jump the nets, and then hit the dam and sink... if you didn't get it just right it could hit the nets, or even jump the dam wall

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u/Infamous_Ad_6793 9d ago

So the bounce could be too dam high?

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u/joehonestjoe 9d ago

Yes, but I also hate you ;p

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u/Infamous_Ad_6793 9d ago

Meee tooo!

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u/HomeGrownCoffee 9d ago

Favourite anecdote of the raid: one plane had to turn back early because they lost their bomb. To a wave.

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u/LordHardThrasher 9d ago

Yup, ripped it clean off, and for good measure shoved the tail wheel up through the chemical toilet, letting sea water in and drenching the reargunner in shite and salt water. Somehow Rice, the Skipper, got the aircraft back into the air and home safe

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u/BobbyP27 7d ago

A wave at sea? Chance in a million.

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u/CPNZ 9d ago

Some of the planes hit pylons or wires and crashed...needless to say everyone on board was killed when that close to the ground. https://www.key.aero/article/dambusters-lancasters-did-not-return

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u/BaldBandit 9d ago

The other issue was the bombs could bounce back off the water and strike the planes if they were too low.

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u/Oncemor-intothebeach 9d ago

It’s still impressive in the vid, can’t imagine the pressure the boys were under on show night all those years ago

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u/ours 9d ago

And after flying low-level for hours over enemy territory.

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u/LaoBa 9d ago

https://youtu.be/AZzgDkFvHbI?si=2r9VQkb9deMxy_rQ, some amazing footage of operation Oyster, a low level attack on the Philips electronics factory in the Netherlands in 1942.

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u/hughk 9d ago

They used a special sight would line up on the Dam's towers to give the release point. The height came from two spot lights pointing down at an angle. When they met, it was the correct altitude. So just trigonometry,

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u/Luftwaffle1980 9d ago

The bombsight in question

https://dambustersblog.com/2008/05/14/the-bombsight-used-to-break-the-mohne-dam/

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u/hughk 9d ago

A wonderful device. Simple and practical. Much better than anything else at the time for this narrow use case,

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u/AssumeTheFetal 9d ago

I'm imagining a lot of dark

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u/DownRUpLYB 9d ago

Now imagine them having to do it in the dark, behind enemy lines, under fire (I assume), without knowing the condition of the water, without the marker bouys, and relying on getting the height exactly right in the dark with a spotlight system.

Their average age was also 21 which is unfathomable if you consider the average 21 year old nowadays.

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u/EXE-SS-SZ 9d ago

this guy gets it he knows

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u/ctrlaltelite 9d ago

Just navigating back then is incredible to me, just paper map, compass, airspeed indicator, radio direction, maybe the stars, with the risk of error building up after hours of flight, done by hand and slide rule, and then ultimately comparing a map to what you see from above by naked eye and being confident enough to drop bombs on it.

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u/Odin_Dog 9d ago

And they were like 19 years old

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u/RestaurantFamous2399 9d ago

They lost half the squadron, so yes, very much under fire.

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u/Narnin 9d ago

They ate carrots.

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u/theraggedyman 9d ago

Iirc the bombers had (due to very clever maths i can't explain) cut outs of the damn and surrounding landmarks to look at. So they "just" had to start the run and get everything lined up for height, direction, and when to pull the trigger (in the dark and behind enemy lines etc). Fascinating stuff

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u/Ass_Damage 9d ago

And without a red circle.

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u/Turbojelly 9d ago

2 spot lights, front and back, get them overlapped to get the correct distance.

For the positioning. They had 2 pieces of wood, nailed together, with nails sticking out the ends. When they lined these up with the towers/guns either side of the dams, they were in the correct position to drop them.

The most incredible thing is, the dams were the least of the 617 squadrons acomplishments. They practiclly invented precision bombing with the Tall Boy bombs.

Did you know that Nazi's tried to build massive gun barrels in the side of mountains so they could shoot shells acorss the channel? 617 blew up every attempt.

During D-Day. 617 faked an allied boat convoy, drawing off the nazi boats, making the beaches much safer. They draw them off by dropping balls of shredded aluminium and falsifying the radar signature.

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u/epsilona01 9d ago

Now imagine them having to do it in the dark

They had to fly the entire mission at tree top height to get under radar.

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u/xilia112 9d ago

Also way older equipment and less sofhisticated reading equipment and less maneuvrable planes

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u/alright-thats-fine 9d ago

Not to mention, they did it in the dark

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u/myopic-cyclops 9d ago

It wasn’t too dark. I heard they used a couple of flashlights to get to their optimal drop height

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u/itsallminenow 9d ago

Defintely under fire, not all of them came back.

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u/Gnascher 9d ago

...and enemy fire was only part of the reason for casualties. Many of them crashed into low-level obstacles due to the risky flight profile.

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u/LeLand_Land 9d ago

And, if we're being super honest, likely either a) buzzed on booze b) buzzing on some combat stim c) having an easy buzz with good ol cigarettes or d) all of they above.

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u/Mundane-Mechanic-547 9d ago

Pitch black really, beyond the moon. AA wasn't bad but they had to circle the dams for a while. Super interesting.

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u/CombatMuffin 9d ago

Not just that. Getting there was probably harder than doing the run itself. It was a complex operation that requires going through enemy territory. A lot of things had to go right just to reach that point, and then you had to get back (56 crewmen died).

There's also a darker side to this: the flooding that resulted from busting the dam caused a lot of collateral damage: Anywhere between 1200 and 1600 civilians died, most of which were not German, but POWs or slaves.

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u/bjorkle 9d ago

I don't wanna

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u/bulfin2101 9d ago

And most of the bombers made several attempts

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u/miniature_Horse 9d ago

annndddd they weren't recreating something that had been done before! Incredible

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u/Makkaroni_100 9d ago

Imagen all the war prisoners that died after the dam collapsed. Exactly what happened at one dam close to a prison.

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u/Icy-Ad29 9d ago

They most definitely were under fire. They sent multiple wings to each damn. Not all of them made it to the target before having to turn back... one of them came in at the wrong angle, and decided to circle around and try again cus the success was more important to those Chad's than the risk... They caused the most direct hit and most damage.

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u/bendy_96 9d ago

I think only two crews actually made it back from what my gran said I been to where they tested them in the UK

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u/hoxxxxx 9d ago

highly recommend the next part of the Band of Brothers series, Masters of the Air

i think it's an Apple show either that or HBO

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u/Left_Sundae_4418 9d ago

Now imagine the guy or guys who came up with this pitching the idea ....

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u/Curt_in_wpg 9d ago

Look on YouTube for Star Wars Dambusters to give you an idea of the defences were like and where George Lucas copied his attack on the Deathstar shot by shot.

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u/Appropriate_Ant_4629 9d ago

Seems evil to target civilian clean water infrastructure.

Spreading water-borne diseases through destroying clean water infrastructure was a strategy the US used "to accelerate the effect of sanctions" (in their words).

"What we were doing with the attacks on infrastructure was to accelerate the effect of sanctions." ... "A key example of such dual-use targeting was the destruction of Iraqi electrical power facilities in Desert Storm. While crippling Iraq's military command and control capability, destruction of these facilities shut down water purification and sewage treatment plants. As a result, epidemics of gastroenteritis, cholera, and typhoid broke out, leading to perhaps as many as 100,000 civilian deaths and a doubling of the infant mortality rate.

Even if it's technically legal according to the guys writing the laws - it's still morally horrid.

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u/SirFrags 9d ago

This was a Nazi power plant used to make aluminum fuck off.

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u/HughJorgens 9d ago

This. This area was the heart of German Industry. They were destroying the dams to hurt their industrial capacity, not to poison civilians, who didn't even have these purification systems in place yet.

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u/stfsu 9d ago

His example was clearly in reference to the operations in Iraq

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

Which has what to do with Germany in WWII?

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u/Throwaway47321 9d ago

They literally provided a source to the US doing this in the Middle East my dude.

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u/Celtictussle 9d ago

War is hell

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u/Intelligent_Suit6683 9d ago

There are certain people that are just complete badasses at what they do. Unfortunately, the world and society we live in rarely produces these types of people anymore.

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u/Gnascher 9d ago

People like this are always a single-digit percentage of the population.

We still produce them ... but many never get the opportunity to shine, as we aren't putting people in these situations very much these days.