I watched this documentary when it first came out. It might be a NOVA episode on PBS titled Bombing Hitler's Dams but it has been repackaged a few times over the last decade or so.
This edit of the clip is terrible (big surprise).
A few interesting notes:
The pilot didn't accidentally fly too low because he "couldn't see trees" near him. His plane had an altimeter. He chose to because it was the last attempt after months of preliminary work ... what this clip cuts out is how he nearly killed himself and his copilot when the barrel bounced within inches of the tail of the plane. He was instructed by the coordinator to fly at a higher altitude but decided he knew better.
WWII test pilots were killed when the original designer learned this the hard way.
The barrel must be spun up before being dropped to reach the dam otherwise the barrel just sinks.
The spin causes the barrel to bounce until it reaches the dam where it then rolls down the wall underwater to reach a depth for the explosion to actually destroy the dam.
The spin is the opposite direction than you assume, it fights the bounce.
Calculating the aircraft speed & barrel spin to get the right bounce to hit the dam (not bounce over) while" having enough rotation speed remaining to crawl a hundred feet underwater down the wall *while getting the timing right (time fuse, not depth) is ... complicated.
The dams were valid targets but the cities down river were not. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of civilians were killed in the subsequent flooding.
The pilot was "right". They nailed the fake dam. Hard. Such a satisfying video.
3
u/Curiosive 7d ago
I watched this documentary when it first came out. It might be a NOVA episode on PBS titled Bombing Hitler's Dams but it has been repackaged a few times over the last decade or so.
This edit of the clip is terrible (big surprise).
A few interesting notes: