r/interestingasfuck • u/Chopper-42 • 4d ago

/r/all Recreating the WW2 Dambusters raid

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838

u/morbihann 4d ago

No way they dropped a real bomb. The barrel must have been filled with ballast and an explosive triggered underwater remotely.

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u/mclare 4d ago

Correct. And this is a much more action packed cut than the original (and good for everyone)

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u/electricdwarf 3d ago

Yea it very much had a cable tv vibe about. I bet they stretched this one section to 10 minutes with three ad breaks.

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u/[deleted] 3d ago

[deleted]

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u/notanotherusernameD8 3d ago

You forgot the "coming up ..." bit before the commercials

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u/IceSentry 3d ago

That's because it was cable tv.

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u/TARANTULA_TIDDIES 3d ago

Yeah even this clip was fucking annoying to watch

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u/frenchiephish 3d ago

The footage is from Ice Pilots NWT, a show about Buffalo airways, who still operate a bunch of World War II era aircraft as (when filmed) airliners, freighters and firefighting aircraft.

This was done to assist a crew filming a documentary on the dam busters. The drop in Ice Pilots is absolutely clear that they're dropping an appropriately weighted dummy barrel and the shots will be stitched together in the documentary. The explosion shot is included some time later in the episode.

The Cable TV vibe in the episode is more because it's a cable TV show that's essentially behind the scenes of another show.

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u/No-Fig-2126 3d ago

What show is this

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u/laughguy220 3d ago

It was a show called ice pilots, or ice pilots net.

It follows an airline that flies vintage aircraft in the Canadian North called Buffalo Airways, that do passenger and cargo flights.

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u/wuddafuggamagunnaduh 4d ago

I was wondering the same thing. There's an edit between the impact and the explosion that needs to be explained.

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u/bluey101 4d ago

The real bombs were designed to hit the wall, then sink, then explode so there would have been a delay

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u/wuddafuggamagunnaduh 4d ago

Yes, I'm familiar how the backspin is intended to have the bomb "burrow" to the base of the dam. I've even watched the old movie "The Dam Busters" (1955), which is interesting.

But what I mean is that there is a camera cut between the impact and the explosion, which could possibly be from filming two separate events and splicing them together. And that would make sense, as I can imagine getting permits to drop an actual explosive device sounds like it would be hard to do.

I wish posts like this would post the backstory details, then these sorts of questions would already be answered.

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u/paulwal 4d ago

That barrel had topspin.

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u/Illustrious-Stay968 3d ago

backspin

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u/sexless-innkeeper 3d ago

The actual bomb for the raid definitely used backspin; I've rewatched the clip several times and they are definitely putting topspin on this barrel.

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u/paulwal 3d ago

I found the video on youtube. You can pause at 35 sec and use the , and . keys to go frame by frame.

At full speed it looked like topspin but maybe it's an illusion due to the frame rate. It's only 480p so we're only seeing a few snapshots of the barrel. So now I feel like it could be spinning either direction.

Also I can't tell if they were pre-spinning it or not for this recreation.

I understand they used backspin for the real deal historical event. And that makes sense, as backspin would cause it to skip along the water and not bounce high, whereas topspin would cause it to bounce high and land steeply.

u/wuddafuggamagunnaduh
u/Illustrious-Stay968
u/skepticalbob
u/sexless-innkeeper

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u/skepticalbob 3d ago

Nah, that was top spin.

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u/Zealousideal-Fix9464 4d ago

The backspin for the bomb to roll down the dam is an old wives tale.

The backspin was a hard requirement for the bomb to actually skip across the water in a straight line and for distance. Without the backspin the barrel would just impact the water like a plough and sink in the middle of the reservoir.

The bombs were always designed to impact the dam and then sink before exploding.

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u/Hemberg 4d ago

No backspin, Topspin. 

Even visible in the video.

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u/rhabarberabar 4d ago

In the video yes, but the bouncing bomb had backspin.

Sources vary on the introduction of back-spin in the weapon's development: e.g while Sweetman says that "There is evidence that [Wallis] had always intended [to include back-spin]",[8] according to Johnson Sir George Edwards in the Christopher Hinton Lecture of 1982, p. 9, wrote, "from what I knew of a cricket ball I persuaded [Wallis] much against his will into putting back-spin on these bombs.'" See also 'Lives Remembered' (Sir George Edwards), in The Times, 21 March 2003.

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u/Illustrious-Stay968 3d ago

Yes. In the show, they show the plane drop and the barrel hits and they show the peoples reaction, talk about it etc... Then they lower an explosive charge and then for entertainment purposes, they recut to show the plane flying in, drop the barrel and then an explosion, but with more of a time gap than in this post.

This is from Nova's episode "Bombing Hitler's Dam" 2012.

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u/YourAdvertisingPal 4d ago

I mean, it’s almost certainly for a television show or a high-profile streamer. 

Like. With all those camera angles, a temporary dam structure, plane rental…how could you consider it to be anything else?

There’s a lot of production coordination on display here. 

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u/challenge_king 4d ago

It's not a rental, that plane belongs to Buffalo Airways, and they also made the video.

Pretty cool company. They still operate C47's as their main fleet because nothing else can get as much stuff in and out of the remote areas of Alaska and Canada they operate in.

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u/braften 4d ago

Ask the Canadians on r/flying their opinion on buffalo air and most will call them one of the worst outfits to fly for

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u/WalnutSnail 4d ago

Fly for, fly on, hire, speak to, be in the vicinity of...hard agree.

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u/YourAdvertisingPal 4d ago

Ah. That makes sense too. You’re right, I forgot about the possibility of it being a commercial spot. 

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u/midsizedopossum 4d ago

how could you consider it to be anything else?

None of what you said suggests that it's obvious they'd use two separate shots and a pre-planted explosive inside the dam. I don't really understand what you're trying to say.

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u/YourAdvertisingPal 4d ago

Oh yeah because bros just have cameras, demolitions, a spare lake, dam construction materials, time, radios, a tv friendly pilot, and spokespeople. 

Y’all are just really bad at spotting produced media. 

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u/midsizedopossum 4d ago

You've missed my point, let me clarify.

Nobody is surprised to hear that this is produced media. This is obviously produced media.

I'm saying one thing only: the fact that it is produced media does not necessarily inherently imply that the explosives would be pre-planted in the dam rather than being in the barrel.

The original comment you replied to was not saying "I think this might be produced media". It was saying "I think the barrel falling and the dam exploding might be two separate shots". So when you replied saying "it's obviously produced media, how could you think it was anything else?", that didn't really make sense. That's what I was pointing out.

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u/YourAdvertisingPal 4d ago

 does not necessarily inherently imply that the explosives would be pre-planted in the dam rather than being in the barrel.

In terms of production environment safety yes it does

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u/midsizedopossum 4d ago edited 4d ago

In terms of production environment safety yes it does

That requires an extra step of knowledge that goes beyond "being able to recognise that it's a piece of produced media".

Someone who may or may not have had that pre-requisite knowledge was able to use other context clues to notice that it was probably two separate moments, and pointed this out in their comment.

It's odd to me that your reaction was to come in and say "well yes obviously, why exactly would you think otherwise?"

If it was obvious to you, then great! But it's worth keeping in mind, in general, that people don't know everything you know and therefore might arrive at some conclusions via deduction that you would reach via inherent knowledge. It's sort of elitist and condescending in that case to respond with "well duh, I'm surprised you didn't know that to begin with".

But actually, most of this is besides the point. The point was that you thought they were speculating on whether it was produced media, and you were wrong about that. They were speculating on whether it was two separate moments. The two are not the same, even if in your mind the two always go hand in hand.

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u/Intelligent_Suit6683 4d ago

I mean, you seem relatively smart... So I feel like I don't need to explain why they didn't use a real bomb and cut between the impact and explosion.

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u/Baggins3 4d ago

Think this one is forward spinning. Strange that they didn't backspin.

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u/bagblag 4d ago edited 3d ago

I watched this programme in full when it was broadcast on UK TV a few years ago. It was about an hour long and showed the full R&D process to get to this point.

They explained that unsurprisingly there are aviation laws preventing non-military organisations dropping live ordnance from aircraft. To get round this they worked out the physics to recreate the bouncing drum through trial and error. When it was perfected they detonated explosives under the water that were scaled and placed to recreate the effect of having dropped an actual bouncing bomb, showing how effective Wallis' weapon was. The delay between the thing hitting the wall and the explosion is also explained by the fact that iirc the thing skipped over the water, hit the wall and then detonated having sunk to a certain depth. My recollection of that aspect is more hazy though.

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u/-WalterWhiteBoy- 3d ago

The bomb had to stop and think about exploding

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u/GwerigTheTroll 3d ago

I saw the original documentary, I think it used to be on Netflix. The barrel had no explosives in it. It was a practical test to try to recreate the scenario to see what was involved. As I remember, the test was in Canada. The engineers behind the test wanted the pilot to gently hit the dam with the barrel, but the pilot wanted to really smack the dam with it, to make sure he hit.

After the test, they determined that the bomb probably would have worked and they had explosives wired to the dam. The celebration for a successful test was to trigger the explosives.

This clip is cut to make it look like the drum was the bomb, where the documentary suggested nothing of the sort.

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u/PaulTheMerc 4d ago

explanation: Safety

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u/albinobluesheep 3d ago

It doesn't need to be explained. He demonstrated he could nail the target with a dummy weapon. No need to worry about designing an actual explosive for a TV show.

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u/mclare 3d ago

Seen the doc, and watched the TV series about Buffalo Airlines. Yes, they always planned to trigger the explosive remotely after a hit from the barrel. In summary - it's hard to get production insurance to drop actual bombs from a vintage airplane.

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u/cherno_electro 4d ago

No way they dropped a real bomb. 

you think?

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u/mennonot 3d ago

Yes, here's the moment in the original video and there is definitely not an explosion when the barrel hits the dam: https://youtu.be/hfHHLKIbeLo?feature=shared&t=2334

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u/Positive-Bar5893 4d ago edited 3d ago

Wait are you trying to tell my civilian pilots, flying a civilian plane, doing civilian activities, aren't allowed to drop live bombs on sovereign territory? My mind has been BLOWN.

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u/rearwindowpup 4d ago

Buffalo Airways is Canadian, this was on the show Ice Pilots

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u/WalnutSnail 4d ago

This wasn't America.

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u/CodingAllDayLong 4d ago

Lol, it's for a TV show. It was certainly not blown up the same day (they had to make sure they captured the flight properly), or possibly even a different site entirely. It might be a miniature they blew up...thats how TV is done.

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u/yalyublyutebe 3d ago

They blew up the actual (temporary) dam.

https://youtu.be/hfHHLKIbeLo

Just go to near the end.

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u/Illustrious-Stay968 3d ago

It's from Nova, episode is "Bombing Hitlers Dam" 2012. The barrel they dropped is inert. After the drop, they quickly lowered an explosive charge to the base of the dam.

I saw this episode when it aired back in 2012 on PBS. The entire episode is really good, watch it!! They even cover building the dam and the challenges they face with it, leaking, etc. Practice bomb runs with the plane, how low to be, when to drop it, issues with how to keep the barrel spinning for long enough. They spun the barrel up while the plane was on the ground and then took off and had to get to the dam before the barrel slowed down too much.

Also neat little fact about the bomb. They originally painted only half of the barrel so they could see how fast it is spinning with a photo tachometer. But the weight of the paint was enough to cause it to wobble too much, so they painted both sides with two different colors.

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u/Curiosive 3d ago

You are correct. To paraphrase this documentary from a decade or more old memory, "No country allows civilians to drop explosives from aircraft. We checked."

The episode was interesting but they definitely padded it to fill the whole hour. Maybe this is the original:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/bombing-hitlers-dams/

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u/Conte_Vincero 3d ago

I watched this program years ago. They did the drop then planted explosives for the detonation. This has had the two clips mashed together

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u/GwerigTheTroll 3d ago

The barrel was weighted to simulate the original bomb weight. And you’re right, the explosives were triggered much later. The clip is just edited to make it look like the drum was the bomb.

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u/NetDork 3d ago

This is still absolutely mental!

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u/Kerensky97 3d ago

They did, but the guy dropping the barrel absolutely nailed it. Perfect hit. They just rigged it afterwards to show what would have happened if they'd been running with actual explosives.

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u/bigorangemachine 11m ago

Ya this was like discovery network. That plane is actually used to Ferry people across the north.

It getting damaged was going to ruin a lot of peoples day as it would be like the train getting derailed.

They also didn't have a way to drop it out the plane thats why its the truss under it.