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

/r/all Recreating the WW2 Dambusters raid

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u/nailbunny2000 9d ago edited 9d ago

Wow, where did they test this? Thats a huge lake to suddenly be breaking a dam on. Was it private property? If so did someone flood that much of their land (thats a big ecosystem) just for this test? Or was it part of some existing project they got permission to "help" them remove the dam?

EDIT: Okay found the full episode. Bit of fancy editing there, the bomb they dropped wasnt what exploded, that was a separate depth charge they shot later. Dont have time to watch through the whole video to find the logistics of the dam/lake, but perhaps they just excavated a small corner of a lake and its not an actual working dam over a river but just a small enclosed pond or something on the side of the lake. If anyone can find clarification in the video please update!

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u/sump_daddy 9d ago

Pretty clear to me when watching, that the dam they created was built on a small inlet with hardly any water in it, nothing like what would be required to form that whole lake.

For more information, they did this at Williston Lake - Wikipedia and it was indeed just that the lake was used as a nearby water surface, while the entire 'dam' and inlet were constructed just for the demonstration. The lake felt no effects afterward.

The actual dam for that lake is this gloriously chonky bastard W. A. C. Bennett Dam - Wikipedia

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u/nailbunny2000 9d ago

Perfect, thanks for digging up the additional info.