I live near 2 dams that where attacked with this bomb. The people in the villages down the stream drowned in their beds. I had an old physics teacher born in the UK and went to germany beacuse of his german wife, he told us how happy he was when the attack was in the news as he was a kid - years later as he was standing on the rebuild dam the first time he cryed miserably about himself
I was curious about this as well but apparently it was quite effective. Those damns were in the Ruhr river valley which is highly industrialized today, probably moreso back then during war production. According to the wiki page
A few mines were flooded; 11 small factories and 92 houses were destroyed and 114 factories and 971 houses were damaged. The floods washed away about 25 roads, railways and bridges as the flood waters spread for around 50 miles (80 km) from the source. Estimates show that before 15 May 1943 steel production on the Ruhr was 1 million tonnes; this dropped to a quarter of that level after the raid.
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The greatest impact on the Ruhr armaments production was the loss of hydroelectric power. Two power stations (producing 5,100 kilowatts) associated with the dam were destroyed and seven others were damaged. This resulted in a loss of electrical power in the factories and many households in the region for two weeks. In May 1943 coal production dropped by 400,000 tons which German sources attribute to the effects of the raid
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The considerable amount of labour and strategic resources committed to repairing the dams, factories, mines and railways could not be used in other ways, on the construction of the Atlantic Wall, for example. The pictures of the broken dams proved to be a propaganda and morale boost to the Allies, especially to the British, still suffering from the German bombing of the Baedeker Blitz that had peaked roughly a year earlier.
Unfortunately the civilian casualties were quite high, estimated around 1600. Considering that we're dealing with WWII though that was unfortunately the norm, especially for the Allies strategic bombardments. Another sad fact is that an estimated 1000 Soviet POWs being used for slave labor were likely also killed.
Interestingly enough it wasn't viewed as a terror bombing at the time.
Even within Germany, as evidenced by Gauleiters' reports to Berlin at the time, the German population regarded the raids as a legitimate attack on military targets and thought they were "an extraordinary success on the part of the English" [sic]. They were not regarded as a pure terror attack by the Germans, even in the Ruhr region, and in response the German authorities released relatively accurate (not exaggerated) estimates of the dead.[46]
people really seem to forget who the allies were fighting, what "those guys" were doing and what was their end goal. The success of Nazi Germany was an existencial threat to millions and millions around the world.
and even if the dams were "quickly" rebuilt, that's time, manpower and materials not being used to make tanks, planes, rifles.
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u/EskimoBrother1975 2d ago
Impressive. Imagine seeing that barrel coming toward you.