No 617 Squadron and the operation to breach the dams
Title
No 617 Squadron and the operation to breach the dams
Description
Album page with three clippings, one from from The Daily Telegraph and Morning Post dated Tuesday May 18 1943 showing a number of Lancasters over a city, captioned '617 Lancs'. One summarising the news from around November 1944, including the sinking of the Tirpitz, and one summarising the effect of the dams operation. Two photographs, one with six airmen, grouped in front of a wooden building, captioned '617 Groundcrew', ' Josh'. The second a sergeant, in the countryside, captioned 'Duffy'.
Date
1943-05-18
1944-11
Language
Format
One photocopied sheet
Publisher
Rights
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
Identifier
MFalgateD136896-160407-05
Transcription
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH AND MORNING POST, TUESDAY, MAY 18, 1943
[photograph]
[inserted] 617 ‘Lanks’ [/inserted]
This Morning’s War News
Tirpitz Sunk
29 Lancasters’ attack; three direct hits with 12,000lb bombs; battleship capsizes; one plane missing. (Pp 1 & 6)
Battle of Germany
Germans quitting Metz: three forts abandoned (P1)
Germans attack all day to check Patton (P6)
Coal
Situation worse than ever. (P1)
Germany
Excuses but no Hitler for Germans. (P1)
Anglo-French Talks
Premier’s 100-mile drive in blizzard. (P1)
France to help in occupation of Germany; success of talks. (P6)
Arnhem Withdrawal
Men of Wessex made last stand (P3)
Russia
Red Army are closing on Budapest (P5)
[photograph]
[inserted] 617 Groundcrew “Josh” [/inserted]
[photograph]
[inserted] “Duffy” [/inserted]
BROKEN DAMS
To break dams and flood the country against an invader is a manoeuvre well known in the wars of freedom. WILLIAM THE SILENT baffled the Spanish as his descendant, our WILLIAM III., baffled the French by opening the dykes of Holland. So in this war the Russians blew up the great dam of the Dnieper to check the Germans. It is new tactics to flood the enemy’s country far behind his front. The onslaught of Bomber Command on the three biggest dams in Germany has shocked the Wehrmacht. The tone of aggrieved surprise in the German announcement that the dams were destroyed, “which caused floods resulting in heavy civilian casualties,” confesses that an unforeseen and disastrous blow was dealt to the power of Germany’s war machine.
The chief power house of the Reich, the Ruhr, requires enormous quantities of water to keep its coke ovens and its factories in production. Now that the 134,000,000 tons of water behind the Mohne dam have surged down the Ruhr valley the Wehrmacht will go short of urgently needed armaments. The industrial organisation of the Ruhr depends to a large extent on water transport, and from the 200,000,000 tons of water in the Waldeck reservoir the Ems-Weser canal, a main artery, was fed. With railways strained far beyond capacity, the mutilation of the canal system is a grievous disaster. There are secondary effects – damage to hydro-electric plants, factories, roads and bridges – not much less grave. Bomber Command have struck deep, and their achievement may well alarm the Reich. Successful air attack on a large dam was considered not long ago impossible. Germany will learn that other things outside the calculations of the Luftwaffe are now possible to the Allied Air Forces.
[photograph]
[inserted] 617 ‘Lanks’ [/inserted]
This Morning’s War News
Tirpitz Sunk
29 Lancasters’ attack; three direct hits with 12,000lb bombs; battleship capsizes; one plane missing. (Pp 1 & 6)
Battle of Germany
Germans quitting Metz: three forts abandoned (P1)
Germans attack all day to check Patton (P6)
Coal
Situation worse than ever. (P1)
Germany
Excuses but no Hitler for Germans. (P1)
Anglo-French Talks
Premier’s 100-mile drive in blizzard. (P1)
France to help in occupation of Germany; success of talks. (P6)
Arnhem Withdrawal
Men of Wessex made last stand (P3)
Russia
Red Army are closing on Budapest (P5)
[photograph]
[inserted] 617 Groundcrew “Josh” [/inserted]
[photograph]
[inserted] “Duffy” [/inserted]
BROKEN DAMS
To break dams and flood the country against an invader is a manoeuvre well known in the wars of freedom. WILLIAM THE SILENT baffled the Spanish as his descendant, our WILLIAM III., baffled the French by opening the dykes of Holland. So in this war the Russians blew up the great dam of the Dnieper to check the Germans. It is new tactics to flood the enemy’s country far behind his front. The onslaught of Bomber Command on the three biggest dams in Germany has shocked the Wehrmacht. The tone of aggrieved surprise in the German announcement that the dams were destroyed, “which caused floods resulting in heavy civilian casualties,” confesses that an unforeseen and disastrous blow was dealt to the power of Germany’s war machine.
The chief power house of the Reich, the Ruhr, requires enormous quantities of water to keep its coke ovens and its factories in production. Now that the 134,000,000 tons of water behind the Mohne dam have surged down the Ruhr valley the Wehrmacht will go short of urgently needed armaments. The industrial organisation of the Ruhr depends to a large extent on water transport, and from the 200,000,000 tons of water in the Waldeck reservoir the Ems-Weser canal, a main artery, was fed. With railways strained far beyond capacity, the mutilation of the canal system is a grievous disaster. There are secondary effects – damage to hydro-electric plants, factories, roads and bridges – not much less grave. Bomber Command have struck deep, and their achievement may well alarm the Reich. Successful air attack on a large dam was considered not long ago impossible. Germany will learn that other things outside the calculations of the Luftwaffe are now possible to the Allied Air Forces.
Collection
Citation
“No 617 Squadron and the operation to breach the dams,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed November 8, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/10993.
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