Op Chastise - 74 yrs ago tonight
 

Most of us lead busy lives, so in the hubbub of that daily routine one could be forgiven for overlooking today's date.

So this is hopefully a timely reminder that this evening might be an appropriate juncture to open a bottle of your favourite tipple and have a drink to 133 men whose Personal Parts were clearly ferrous in nature. :D

And have a second for the 53 that didn't make it back, especially Flt Lt John Hopgood DFC* who should have also got a VC, IMHO. :(

... or for not having time to Google it to remind ourselves what dam occasion you're referring to. :O

For those who came in late, as the Phantom would say. (I'm referring to those who think 30 years ago, was ancient times).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chastise

Those brave men must have needed wheelbarrows to haul around their cojones, I'd say. One doubts whether we'll see their like again.

Is there much point in mohning about it now - eider you remember it or you don't, but it takes all sorpes.

PDR

Designed by a spin doctor?

Watched the film this afternoon with a bottle of New Zealand's finest (appropriate). There seemed to be more dust about in Wanchai than usual.

May have mentioned it before but had a gite guest a few years back who as a small boy had been awakened by aircraft noise and explosions. He went for a walk and came back and told hid Mother that someone had pulled out the plug of the Edersee.......

Based at JHQ Rheindahlen in the early 1970s it was standard practice to visit the Dams or in my case the Möhnesee during ones' tour in Germany.


http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...ps36672918.jpg
I took this photo of the dam in 1973, but struggled then as now when I examine the photo to see where repairs to the face had been made, although to be fair the photo was taken thirty-years after repair and assume the brick facing has weathered over the years.

Under the Geneva Conventions of nowadays, wouldn't the deaths of the 800+ Allied POWs which resulted from that 'atrocity' be considered to be a war crime?

Or is that outdated thinking?:ouch:

Visited the Eder on the 40th anniversary of the raid...

In an F-4. At low level, several passes - some in formation. The Gutersloh SNavO had forgotten to tell us that we weren't supposed to use the dams as turning points / targets etc. But lots of genpub waving at us seemed happy enough.

I think...:hmm:

Didn't have the heart to tell the SNavO that we'd also 'said hello' to the Möhne on the way back to Gut...:E

What was an F4 doing operating out of Gutesloh - it was a Harrier/Wessex station. IIRC the F4s were at Wildenrath.

PDR

PDR1, we were there on detachment from Wattisham for EX BOLD GAUNTLET, together with some F-15s, Mirage 3, C-160 and a C-130.

At my age I thought I was up to date on the dams raid and subsequent events but I never heard of the 800 POW deaths as a result, would you enlighten me (us) please Caz?

PDR

Just to back Beagle up - it was as he says, detached Ops - there was an (?) annual exercise based at least in part at Gutersloh that involved various NATO Air Defenders, (and others). Looking at the logbook I've got a few F-4 sorties flown out of there in '81.

Onetrack,


"One doubts whether we'll see their like again."

Oh contraire, we saw many MANY examples of 'their like' in Iraq and Afghanistan and many paid a grievous price for it.

Try au contraire.

To mark the occasion, I see that the RAF Museum has circulated a photograph .... with a certain dog front and near-centre:


https://twitter.com/rafmuseum/status/864786354017796096

Abject apologies, chaps! I read that the wrong way entirely. I was at Gutesloh for a couple of weeks in 1976, but as an ATC cadet. Spent time with 18sqn (including a Wessex flight along the border) and did visits to the border itself, the Paderborn viaduct and the Mohne Dam. They warned us that a previous group of cadets had been thrown off the damn for marching up and down singing the dambusters theme, and then left us there for two hours. Well after spending 20 mins looking down the valley (where all the water went) and up the valley (how did they get such a big aeroplane in there!) there wasn't that much more to do.

We found that at one end you could get down to a small pebbley beach next to the dam, so some of us went paddling. And of course we started skimming stones - for some reason this really upset them...

Mind you, I thought they were rather selective in their outrage, because the gift-shop/cafe on the dam itself sold the old Revel plastic kit of the Lancaster Type 464 as a souvenir.

PDR