The Valour and the Horror

KEN BROWN:

We used to think that 500 feet was low level. On this particular squadron, they started us off at 150 feet. We were really getting low. But when they asked us

to start flying at 60 feet at night, over water, believe me, this was a whole new experience. You had trees, you had high tension wires, you had all kinds of obstacles, even some balloons. And at that altitude, you can't really be sloppy in flying, because if you dropped a wing, at 60 feet, it would be on the ground.

The first target was to be the Mohne dam, a gigantic concrete wall 125 feet thick at its base, protected by anti-aircraft guns mounted in its towers. The second target would be the Sorpe Dam, a more vital dam. It was also much thicker, reinforced with earth and stone. The huge earthen dam was obviously invulnerable to an attack by bouncing the bomb across the water. And so it was decided that the approach would have to be made sideways, coming in over this church steeple. That was Ken Brown's assignment - dive down over the village, into the valley below, release the bomb at low level to roll along the length of the dam and then quickly pull up to escape the hills on the other side.

A painting by Frank Wooten of the RAF Bomber Command. raid on the Mohne Dam on the night of May 16/17 1943. The attack successfully breached the dam and caused widespread loss of life and destruction. The attack was not repeated and within the month the damage had been repaired.

Seventeen bombers took off for the dams mission on the evening of May 16,1943. The planes were so heavy they could barely clear the hedge at the end of the runway. They flew at low level all the way to the target, 600 kilometers away. Ken Brown remembers the flight well...at one point he found himself racing straight for the front door of this German castle. He pulled up just in time to clear the chimneys. When he got to the target area... he could make out the church steeple...but the rest of the valley and the earthen dam itself was covered in fog.

The combination of darkness and fog made it almost impossible to make his bombing run.

The famous 1954 Movie "The Dambusters" dramatized the attack on the other concrete dam - the Mohne.

Meanwhile 25 kilometers away, Ken Brown's crew was having trouble even finding the Sorpe dam... Ken Brown made a direct hit on the Sorpe earthen dam. The villagers nearby saw the large splash of the explosion. But that was it - the dam did not give way in the least...

Ken Brown's Lancaster returned to base at 5:30 in the morning...he was one of the lucky ones. Of the seventeen attacking planes, nine were shot down - nine of the best aircrews in Bomber Command.

KEN BROWN : We should've had a weapon quite different. Because the weapon wasn't...for this particular dam. The Mohne dam, a different building altogether, construction altogether should say. It may have worked well there, and did, but on this construction it was really almost useless.

Dyson:

The attack was more costly to England than to Germany. But like many other such follies, it was a public relations triumph.