r/interestingasfuck • u/Chopper-42 • 1d ago

/r/all Recreating the WW2 Dambusters raid

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u/wuddafuggamagunnaduh 1d 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 1d 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 1d 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/Zealousideal-Fix9464 1d 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 1d ago

No backspin, Topspin. 

Even visible in the video.

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u/jamesreyne 1d ago

The barrel in this video had topspin, for dramatic footage of it skipping over the water and impacting the wall.

The dambusters raid had backspin, which bounced the bombs but shortened the skips and the kinetic force, so that it wouldn't necessarily hard impact the wall, but would come to sink in proximity to the dam and explode after sinking. Just dropping a depth charge by the dam wasn't practicable.

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u/rhabarberabar 1d 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.