Dambusters: Building the Bouncing Bomb

[FTE Pruner]

Interesting point, though you should note that the original trials had none of these safety hurdles either, but the programme was a spectacular success.

I am not sure that is the point. Especially when you consider the video shown of aircraft crashing during the (admittedly post-war) testing.

Even if they did do safety assessments (which clearly wouldn't be shown on TV since they are generally tedious) I doubt the crew had sufficient specialist training to allow them do it correctly (evident from their actions during the testing).

Decisions like spinning up the bomb to full speed for the very next drop after a stores release hang-up (which could have ended in disaster) showed that the team were time pressure driven, on what was hardly a UOR!

However good the pilot was at flying, by deviating from the release parameters he exposed himself and his crew to unknown risk and also meant that the required data was not gathered!

If I were Dr Hunt, I would have been mightily annoyed that he ruined the only permitted opportunity to achieve the desired test point by making an uneducated decision.

That said, it was a good programme.