FEATURE: Day of the dammed

LINDY ANDREWS
On May 16, 1943, at 2130 hours, the first of 16 Lancaster bombers thundered down an English runway on a mission that would shake Germany to its core, buoy Britain's war-battered spirits and capture the world's imagination for generations to come.
On board were the 133 members of Squadron 617, a specialist force made up of British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand airmen, including 24-year-old Flight Lieutenant Les Munro.
Within nine hours the squadron had suffered catastrophic losses, with eight aircraft down, 53 men dead and three listed as missing.
But the raid - led by Wing Commander Guy Gibson and regarded by many as the most ingenious and daring of any mounted during World War 2 - was an unequivocal success.
It had ripped open the very heart of Hitler's Third Reich, flooding the Ruhr and Eder valleys and crippling canal networks, railways, steelworks and the national grid.
In the days that followed, the squadron's motto, "apres moi le deluge" - French for "after me, the flood" - would be revealed as darkly apt. To millions the world over, it became known as The Dambusters.
Two years ago, Tauranga man Les Munro, who later rose to the rank of Squadron Leader, returned to England to celebrate the Dambuster's 60th anniversary.
The reunion with his old mates brought back poignant memories for the sole surviving pilot of the mission described by Chief of Bomber Command, Air Vice-Marshall Sir Arthur Harris in its planning stages as "A hare-brained, maverick scheme ... tripe of the worst description."
Les Munro, now plain "Mr" Munro, remembered the turn of fate that propelled him and his colleagues to fame.
"When New Zealand bombers finished their training, they were posted to whatever squadrons the Air Ministry believed needed more crews," he recalled.
The young pilot ended up at RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, from where he flew bomber raids over Germany during the winter of 1942/43.
Blanket bombing under cover of darkness was the preferred strategy and for good reason.
At the time, bomb weights were a maximum 1000lb (454kg) - making it difficult to knock out a specific target - and the heavyweight Lancasters, operating at altitudes of over 20,000ft, (6666m) made easy pickings for lighter, nimbler Luftwaffe Messerschmidts.
Even before war was declared in 1939, the Air Ministry had debated the possibility of targeting the Mohne, Sorpe and Eder hydrodams which powered the Ruhr Valley.
Without water and electricity for industrial and domestic use, strategists reasoned, the rise of Hitler's Third Reich would grind to a halt. But there wasn't a bomb available that could do the job.
That was, until Barnes Wallis devised the bouncing bomb. In 1941, the aircraft designer had found himself mulling over a piece of naval history: Nineteenth century British naval gunners had worked out that a cannon's range could be extended by lowering its trajectory and bouncing cannonballs across the water. Surely, he reasoned, this could be applied to modern warfare.
A pacifist by nature, Wallis somehow rationalised the destruction of the dams to be strictly a bricks-and-mortar job.
Bombing such structures from above was pointless. They had to be literally shaken apart. What was needed was a bomb that would skip across the water, roll down the dam face and detonate at its base, creating huge shock waves.
Barnes Wallis began experimenting with his daughter's marbles, skipping them across a tub of water amid the hollyhocks and lobelia of his back garden.
By early 1943, he had developed several prototype bouncing bombs, of which two held particular promise - the spherical High Ball and a cylindrical version christened Up Keep. Tests were scheduled.
"All the squadrons in No.5 group were circulated, calling for volunteers to form a special squadron," Mr Munro recalled.
"They suggested that they would prefer men at the end of their first tour or into their second."
The Kiwi pilot put his hand up and within days was flying Lancasters on low altitude practice runs over England, Scotland and the North Sea.
The great planes skimmed the earth and sea for miles, venturing as low as a nerve-racking 60ft (18m) - a huge feat of skill and concentration for any pilot as he dodged trees, high-tension wires and other obstacles.
That 617 Squadron was to be deployed on some covert mission was obvious. But what? Speculation ran rife.
"We all had guesses about it, because it was not long before that there had been a low-level attack on the MAN diesel engine factory in Augsberg.
"There was all sorts, we thought we would attack the battleship Tirpitz (sister ship to the notorious Bismarck) ... "We didn't even know we were getting the bouncing bomb." On May 12, 617's pilots and crew were introduced to Up Keep, the key to the Air Ministry's master plan.
Over the next couple of days, 12 Up Keep bouncing bombs were dropped on dummy runs at Reculver Bay, on the Kentish Coast.
"In trials they had been breaking up. Eventually, Barnes Wallis decided that to achieve the desired result, the planes would have to fly at precisely 232mph (373kmh), at a height of 60ft (18m)."
The problem was, at 60ft, the Lancasters' altimeters were rendered useless and pilots lost the horizon. So lamps were mounted under the nose and tail. When their beams intersected, the planes were flying at exactly the right altitude.
The bouncing bombs also had to be delivered at optimum spin - 500rpm.
"It was not a simple exercise; in fact it was bloody dangerous in certain conditions."
S till, the squadron's target remained top secret. Then, on the afternoon of May 16, the airmen were mustered for a briefing.
The aim of Operation Chastise, they were told, was to breach the mighty Ruhr dams.
"The concern was not so much about attacking the dams as the route, which wound through the Ruhr Valley, a heavily defended area."
That night, at 2130 hours, the first wave of five aircraft, including the young Kiwi, piloting AJ-W, took off from Scampton.
With Guy Gibson in the lead, the Lancasters soared into a clear, moonlit sky, each carrying a 9350lb (4196kg) Up Keep strapped to its belly.
"We maintained strict radio silence. If we had talked to each other, the Germans would have picked up our position and possibly sent fighters."
An hour and a half later, over the German-occupied Dutch coast, disaster struck. AJ-K, piloted by Pilot Officer William Byers, was shot down. There were no survivors. Seconds later, a single stream of anti-aircraft fire blazed upward from the tiny island of Vlieland.
"It blew a hole in the middle of the fuselage and cut all our communications systems," Mr Munro says.
"There was only one gun firing at us and we were hit by a single shell. It's just a fluke we weren't hit by more."
For the men of AJ-W, Operation Chastise was all but over. With heavy hearts, they turned back to Scampton.
At 2356 hours, AJ-E, part of the second wave, crashed near Haldern. Again, there were no survivors. Seventeen minutes into May 17, Flt Lt William Astell's craft flew into a pylon. All those aboard died.
Pilot Officer Jeffrey Rice, in AJ-H, was next to abort the mission, after his aircraft's Up Keep fell into the sea.
Oblivious to the destruction behind him, Gibson continued up the Ruhr Valley. At 0027hrs on May 17, he launched his attack on the Mohne dam.
At the codeword "Nigger" - the name of his much-loved labrador dog - Gibson dropped the first Up Keep but it detonated too far from the dam.
Flt Lt Hopgood in AJ-M was next but was hit by flak on his approach.
The bomb bounced over the dam, before detonating on the power station below.
Two of Hopgood's crew parachuted from their Lancaster before it exploded into a fireball, only to be taken as prisoners of war.
Munro, who had landed back at Scamden some 30 minutes before, reported to the Operations Room.
"We were already aware that the first few bombs hadn't breached the dams."
AJ-A's bomb was the first to strike home. After bouncing three times, it exploded in contact with the wall. By the time Maltby swooped in with AJ-J, the dam was already crumbling.
Millions of litres of water began pouring through a 76-metre breach.
Gibson and Young flew on to the Eder with the remaining armed Lancasters, piloted by Shannon, Knight and Maudslay.
It was third time lucky. Knight, in AJ-N, made a dummy run then released his bomb, which bounced three times before blasting a 70-metre hole in the dam.
Between them, the Mohne and Eder contained 370 million tons (376m tonnes) of water, which swept down the Ruhr Valley causing massive destruction and loss of life.
Unfortunately, many of those who died were Ukrainian women and children, who served as slaves to their Nazi captors. The third target was the Sorpe, which sustained some damage to its crest but essentially remained intact.
At 0615hrs on May 17, the tattered remains of Squadron 617 limped home. Four more Lancasters were shot down along the way. Only one man survived.
"But by that stage, aircrews were used to losing friends. We'd all been subjected to it ...
"I think after the raid our actions in the mess were a celebration rather than a wake ... but while we did celebrate, in the back of our minds there was a certain sadness."
Sadness too, for Gibson, who returned to learn that Nigger had been hit by a car, dying just as his master was about to launch his attack.
On BBC radio that morning, Prime Minister Winston Churchill addressed the nation.
"The price we paid has been grievous," the statesman said. "But the punishment and destruction meted out to our enemy has been dreadful for them in its consequences.
"Only posterity will be able to judge the worthiness of the great project."
For years, debate raged as to whether Operation Chastise had been a success.
The average Briton was ecstatic. Germany had at last learned the meaning of suffering.
But for many people - including Barnes Wallis - nothing could compensate for the loss of all those young airmen's lives.
Indeed, when news of the deaths reached the inventor of the bouncing bomb, he stood in his garden and wept inconsolably.
"He was a softly spoken, quiet, self-effacing man. He was tremendously upset," Mr Munro recalls.
"I think he had divorced himself from the human side of it ... and concentrated on what he was trained for; the destruction of a structure that was part of the German effort to make steel."
In the months and years to come, Squadron 617 flew to glory in many other missions.
On November 12, 1944, armed with another Barnes Wallis invention - the 12,000lb (5600kg) Tallboy bomb - its airmen sunk the heavily armed Tirpitz, a seemingly indestructible threat to Allied shipping.
The attack marked the end of Germany's naval war in the North Sea.
They were there on D-Day too, leading the decoy Operation Taxable between England and Calais.
"It upsets me a bit that people today don't seem to recognise that the squadron achieved many other successes," Mr Munro says.
Today Squadron 617 lives on, in movies, books, video games and - in real life - the battlefields of a new millennium.
Only two months ago, the new generation of airmen was deployed to Iraq.
Hopefully, they count themselves as lucky as the young man from Gisborne.
"In retrospect, I think I was lucky," he smiles.
"It was a period of my life I wouldn't change, in spite of the dangers we faced.
"But you had a job to do."