Western Europe · United Kingdom vs Germany
Operation Chastise (Dambusters raid)
16 May 1943 – 17 May 1943
Nineteen Lancasters of 617 Squadron attacked the Ruhr dams with Barnes Wallis's bouncing mine. The Moehne and Eder dams were breached, flooding the valleys below; the Sorpe was damaged. Eight aircraft and 53 aircrew were lost, and about 1,600 people drowned, many of them forced labourers.
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Day by day
— Nineteen Lancasters
617 Squadron takes off from Scampton from 21:28 in three waves, flying at sixty feet to stay under the radar. The first wave goes for the Moehne and then the Eder by the southern route over the Scheldt; the second, sent to the Sorpe, crosses the Dutch coast at Vlieland and loses aircraft to flak and to the sea. Each carries one four-ton mine to be dropped at 220 miles an hour, sixty feet up, spinning backwards.
— The dams go
Gibson makes the first run at the Moehne at ten past midnight and then flies alongside the later aircraft to draw the flak on the towers; the dam breaches at 00:49 after the fifth mine. The surviving aircraft go on to the Eder, undefended but ringed by hills, and breach it at 01:54. The Sorpe, an earth dam, is hit twice and only crumbled. Two waves of water run down the valleys: about 1,600 people drown, most of them at Neheim and many of them Soviet and Polish forced labourers. Eight of the nineteen aircraft do not come back.
