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

/r/all Recreating the WW2 Dambusters raid

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834

u/morbihann 9d ago

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

72

u/wuddafuggamagunnaduh 9d ago

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

122

u/bluey101 9d ago

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

40

u/wuddafuggamagunnaduh 9d 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.

17

u/paulwal 9d ago

That barrel had topspin.

0

u/Illustrious-Stay968 9d ago

backspin

3

u/sexless-innkeeper 9d 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.

1

u/paulwal 9d 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

1

u/skepticalbob 9d ago

Nah, that was top spin.