A Dambusters Question
 

Forgive me if this has been asked before (I may even have asked and forgotten the answer)...
The aircraft used on Operation Chastise had been extensively modified, including, IIRC, the removal of the dorsal turret. Why did they then fly on the raid with complete crews of seven?

Wikipedia is your friend...

Bet that made the Nav happy, bad enough when the pilot wants to carry a map.... :hmm:

I sometimes wonder about Wiki . OK, I'm being pedantic.

And what was Gibbo's dog called again? :)

The Bomb aimer often doubled up as the forward gunner.

I believe that the original crew strength was 8 (2 pilots)

AIUI, the mid-upper gunners operated the front turret on the run in to the dams. There is a drawing somewhere of a natty little stirrup arrangement which ensured that his feet didn't get in the way of the high-tech sighting systems the bomb aimers were using...

The idea was that the bomb aimer could concentrate on that task, without having to hop between bomb aiming and gun firing.

The dog was called Nigger, I believe.

The crews consisted of 7 members on the night of the raid as did all other 18 aircraft.

They were made up thus as in the case of it's leader Guy Gibson.

W.Cdr G Gibson Captain
Sgt. J Pulford F/Engineer
F/O H T Taerum Navigator
F/Lt R E G Hutchinson Wireless Operator
P/O F M Spafford A/Bomb Aimer
F/Sgt G Deering Front Gunner
F/Lt R Trevor-Roper Rear Gunner

Curiously, the official records of the raid give the word 'Dinghy' as being the signal sent when a dam had been breached. The world knows it as 'Nigger' - just as was in the film shown on TV this week.

Strange that.

Different code words for different dams, I think:

'Nigger' for the Moehne and 'Dinghy' for the Eder.

According to Paul Brickhill's excellent book "The Dam Busters", "Nigger" was the code for the breach of the Moehne Dam with "Dinghy" being the code for the destruction of the Eder dam.

Shucks, beaten to it!

A friend of mine was a Lancaster bomb aimer at Skellingthorpe, he always helped the navigator by map reading to the target and he even won the DFC for shooting down a JU88 night fighter from the front turret.
They dont make them like that nowadays!!

The film was on TV a couple of weekends ago .... and brilliant it was too ... until the dog was renamed DIGGER ..... :ugh:

Thats what you would need if you wanted to give him apat on the back these days tbh.

Yep that is right guys. Dinghey for the Eder, I should have read the ops record a little more carefully.

Thanks all- although I should have added that we didn't need another thread about the (expletive deleted) dog! I do not support the supposedly PC need to shield the world from being offended by the past, but does it have to be the prime topic of EVERY thread about the Dambusters? That particular topic was done to death a long time ago, and I am deeply suspicious of the motives of anyone who keeps reintroducing it.

Because as Carlton says, it's just tedious to keep going over it when it has been covered in such depth many times before.

It's now mentioned every time just so that people can say "oh look how brave I am, I won't let the PC brigade muzzle me. I'm going to type Nigger even though everyone who reads this thread knows that was the dog's name, the code word and how it's now been changed"

By repeatedly covering the same ground you run the risk of being as boring as BEagle who prints the same tired old picture of a VC10 and Bear any time there is even remotely any connection with QRA.

Harrumph, an officer in the tail turret! What on earth has the RAF come to?

SNAFU, the Rodney is at the rear making a Charlie of himself....

Presumably navs would be quite grateful for this help, seeing as the bomb aimer had a much better forward view...

And did navs used to crawl to the back end of the cockpit to make observations of the stars through the astrodome, or was that just a design feature which was too much trouble to use?

Which one, Flaps62?

This one:

ZH875
Or, to put it another way, the officer is there to catch the flack first as usual.

BEagle
I like those shots. Have you any in colour?

Mods
I have just had a spell-checker red underline on the word 'colour' above, indicating that I should spell it without a 'u'. Is this a problem with my kit or is there some subversive American influence at work in PPRuNe?

Nice pics Beags, Cheers!

I am another one who gets a bit fed up with the nonsense about the dogs name and whether Guy Gibson was a nice man or not whenever the Dams raid is mentioned. How about the fact that half of 617 Squadron did not return from the raid and out of those 50 lads who died 2 were from my home town. I would suggest that we need to "get a grip" and reassess our priorities!!!

Great pictures and sorry to thread drift.. but I have to ask.

I read somewhere that the TU95 was the noisiest aircraft ever and shadowing crews could hear them quite clearly... Was that the the case?

Yes - the droning noise from those big props could be heard quite clearly. When the civil version, the Tu144, came to Heathrow, it used to dislodge ceiling tiles.

No shots in colour - except the last one which was in colour, but a very grey day!

Back to the dambusters. My own tribute was a whizz round the Eder (past the castle), then over to the Mohne exactly 40 years to the day after the raid. But in a Phantom, not a VC10!

I seem to recall thay, In the days when everyone was interested in unducted fan engines, there was great interest in the Bear's Kuznetsov engines, particularly the reduction gearbox. RR thought a lot could be worked out from a recording and inquired through back channels if any assistance could be provided. Lo and behold, one of the LU QRA F4s was modified with a recorder and mikes (IIRC it was a portable controlled by the navigator with a couple of mikes strung inside the canopy after take-off). When a suitable Q opportunity came along they were scrambled and then sat in the prop wash behind the wing for a couple of hours making a tape. I doubt it was a very comfortable experience.

Beagle: When you say a whiz aound the Eder and then over to the Mohne, did you try and replicate the profile the Lancasters flew ?
I never flew a Phantom but I daresay it would be a tad marginal.

I tried it in something slower on the Mohne in daylight, and it was only then I realised what they accomplished at night.

Past the castle, down the hill, over the water. But at 500 ft, not 60ft!

Did it twice, then joined by another jet we did it in formation, then back via the Moehne to Gutersloh.

It was only then that the SNavO told us that there was an unwritten rule that the dams were never to be used as turning points......

Oh dear. What a pit. Never mind.

But they did wave from the castle balcony!

Back in '75 when I was a boy Harrier pilot on 20 Sqn we had deployed to Diepholz for the NATO exercise Cold Fire. Diepholz was a luftwaffe recruit training base commanded by one Colonel Otto Kraft. The boss took him for a spin in the T4 one day, a quick "armed-recce" through the battle area followed by a bash down Wadi-Weser and then up onto the plateau for a SAP on the Mohne Dam. As they creamed over the dam and down into the valley, the Colonel rumbled: "Zat is not so clever, Ving-Commander, it hass been done before".

Later on, in the bar, it transpired that the Colonel, who had been an Me110 night-fighter pilot, had also flown the Me262. Someone said that he'd read that the Me262 was a handfull in the circuit and difficult to land.

Colonel Kraft: " Ze only time ze 262 wass difficult in ze circuit was venn there wass a Typhoon downvind".

Who says the Germans don't have a sense of humour!

Puts on Goons voice..... "Just about everybody......"

Dambusters
 

The astrodome was right beside my wireless operators seat but when I was operating in 1945 our navigator didn't have any occasion to do any astro-navigation. But that would have been where he would have stood.

[Puts anorak on]

BEagle is of course referring to the Tu 114 (Cleat) not the Tu144 (Charger). But, I expect that could knock some ceiling tiles off too, especially with the Afterburners in. :ok:

[Takes anorak off]

Yes, sorry - typo!

Just a small tribute to the American members of 617 Squadron during the raid.
Believe there were two (but I stand to be corrected), a gunner who's name I've forgotten, and Flt Lt. J.C. McCarthy, pilot who eventually did 48 ops with 617.

Dams as waypoints?
 

BEAGLE: Past the castle, down the hill, over the water. But at 500 ft, not 60ft!

Did it twice, then joined by another jet we did it in formation, then back via the Moehne to Gutersloh.

It was only then that the SNavO told us that there was an unwritten rule that the dams were never to be used as turning points......

Oh dear. What a pit. Never mind.

But they did wave from the castle balcony!

In 1981 Germany held the World Gliding Championships at Paderborn. (Luftwaffe provided briefing on airspace included ' If you find yourself in formation with an aircraft maked with a red star and the pilot is smiling he is in the wrong place. If he is not you are in the wrong place'.:uhoh:)

RAF Germany on polite request provided recce low level photgraphs of the German selected turning points. Included were the Mohne and Eder dams.

By the way, the Champion was George Lee, then a Phantom pilot, later Cathay Pacific.

Joining together a couple of entries:

Once did the mohne in a Shackleton (map reading from the bomb aimer's position to help the Nav). I will wager that it was noisier than the Ruskies mentioned above!

Patrick Bishop's Bomber Boys mentions use of the astrodome on Lancs and in Pathfinder Cranswick by Michael Cumming it describes its use for detecting enemy fighters.

astrodomes also used during the bomb run for spotting friendly a/c overhead with bomb bay doors open!!