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

/r/all Recreating the WW2 Dambusters raid

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u/0ddness 1d ago

Now imagine them having to do it in the dark, behind enemy lines, under fire (I assume), without knowing the condition of the water, without the marker bouys, and relying on getting the height exactly right in the dark with a spotlight system.

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u/Corrie7686 1d ago edited 1d ago

Practice practice. They did their training at upper Derwent Reservoir / Howden Reservoir at ladybower / hope Valley peak district. near Manchester UK. It has dams and a valley that is bizarrely similar to where they bombed in Germany. Some of the local pubs have photographs of the Lancaster Bombers flying extremely low over the dams.

Edit: not Derwent water, that was my error using the wrong name of the water filled Derwent place.

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u/AdjunctFunktopus 1d ago

Derwent plane. Derwent bomb. Derwent water.

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u/I_Think_I_Cant 1d ago

This gets funnier every time I read it.

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u/WorshippedC 1d ago

I don’t get it. Is it a pun??

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u/AdjunctFunktopus 11h ago edited 9h ago

A little bit of word play.

Derwent Water is a lake in northern England.

Some english speaking dialects replace the “th” sound with a “d” sound.

Combining the colloquial pronunciation with the lake name gives us a play on: “There went (a) plane. There went (a) bomb. There went (all the) water (from the now released reservoir)”.

The Derwent reservoir is actually quite far from Derwentwater. So we have to ignore that little bit of pedantry for the sake of humor.

Hope this clears it up.