Operation Chastise

70 years ago today these brave men accomplished the unthinkable...the busted the Ruhr Dams!

Here's to the Royal Air Force's 617 Squadron and the 53 aircrewmen killed!

Salute

Some really good programs on TV here to mark the anniversary.
Also a new book about current ops 617: Going to War with Today's Dambusters .
We owe so much to the men of 617, and all of Bomber Command.

The anniversary flypast....

Bomber Command crews suffered an extremely high casualty rate: 55,573 killed out of a total of 125,000 aircrew (a 44.4% death rate), a further 8,403 were wounded in action and 9,838 became prisoners of war. This covered all Bomber Command operations including tactical support for ground operations and mining of sea lanes. A Bomber Command crew member had a worse chance of survival than an infantry officer in World War I.

Another recent book The Red Line
"More men from Royal Air Force Bomber Command died on one single night of the Second World War than the total RAF aircrew losses during the whole of the four-month-long Battle of Britain.

This is the story of the air raid intended to be the climax of Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris’s relentless campaign to defeat Nazi Germany. The target was Nuremberg: 795 aircraft set out, nearly 700 men did not return. In ‘The Red Line’, we meet the young aircrew who flew on the night of 30 March 1944. John Nichol has interviewed the few surviving veterans, British and German, in the air and on the ground, to record the voices of a diminishing generation.

While the airmen of Bomber Command were among the greatest heroes of the conflict, their contribution and sacrifice has, until recently, been sidelined in the face of post-war criticism of Bomber Command’s tactics. Yet they were among the best of their generation. John Nichol’s dramatic tribute to the men who flew on the RAF’s bloodiest raid has provided the surviving veterans with the chance to tell the story of that terrible night – the night they flew to Nuremberg."

Flight Lieutenant John Nichol - Biography

During 15 years service in the Royal Air Force John Nichol served as a technician and, after being commissioned from the ranks, as a Tornado Navigator in both the Air Defence and Ground Attack roles. On active duty in the Gulf he was shot down on the first low-level, daylight raid of the first Gulf War. Captured and tortured, he was paraded on television provoking worldwide condemnation and leaving one of the enduring images of the conflict. He returned to active duty and was involved in policing the exclusion zone as part of the UN force maintaining the fragile peace in Bosnia. He has served around the world from the Nevada Desert to the Middle East and Norway to the Falkland Islands.