The 'Dambusters'. The true story of World War II's most daring bombing mission.  

They were terrorists.

Indeed they were

@@martinottley2395 They were like ISIS.

They were like ISIS.

My grandads cousin was Henry Maudslay, (the man who blew up the Eder dam) and I can’t imagine flying a bomber that low and that fast in pitch black with no nvg’s so brave they were

Now that's an uncle I wish I had! I've seen several interviews with him and was always impressed by his manner and the fact that he said when people in a pub found out who he was he never had to buy a beer!

@@B-A-L There were many Americans that went to Canada and on to the UK as Canadians, because it was illegal for a US Citizen to serve in a foreign army !!! !

I agree. Background music is absolutely annoying and unnecessary.

Agreed. Maybe during the parts without narration.

Be thankful some SJW did not get this doc removed. The code name and dog name. They are always trying to cancel history. Oh I forgot, SJW"s will not watch something like this.

🙂

@@septegram why? It’s not a musical. It’s a documentary.

You haven’t seen the video on the reconstruction of the mission for the anniversary some years ago???

Stephen Diskin. The documemtry about the 617 Dambusters was excellent.

I actually liked the doc, too. I really liked following the development process to come up with a weapon that put whole sections of nazi mfg out of commission even if for only a few month, and then tie up resources to protect the dams afterwards.

Chris Askin, Per Ardua Ad Astra, 24 years, man and boy, 79-03, Rigger. You? My one and Only Claim to fame is from my Grandad, he was part of the team that did the modifications to the 617 Sqn Lancasters to take the “bomb”, I still have his Apprenticeship manuals from his time working at A.V Roe (Avro) and I actually used them to get through my Fitters Course, they were going to my son when he joined up, but he ended up with the regiment, not much call for them firing Rapiers and field Sqn.

Chris Askin No nothing to do with it.

@@allandavis8201 71 - 93. 2yr apprenticeship at Halton then Leuchars, Bruggen, Coningsby, Bruggen, Coningsby, Linton-on-ouse, Church Fenton and finally Coningsby again. I was a Plumber and my final tour at Coningsby began as an instructor on the Phantom Servicing School, then communism collapsed in the USSR and the powers that be couldn't wait to get rid of the Phantom quickly enough (along with many other things) and with that the life of Riley was over. I was moved on to the Tornado F3 OEU, two years later I was made redundant, and as far as I'm concerned the armed forces are now just a rump of what they used to be sadly.

You had a 50% chance of being killed in the first 5 missions and 50% in the remaining 25. The father of a friend of mine survived two complete tours as a navigator on Halifaxes and another friend's father survived a tour of 30 missions as a tail gunner on Lancasters, before going on to fly as a Pathfinder, in which capacity he completed another one and a half tours as a tail gunner. Remember that Pathfinder tours were _45 missions..._

Thank you Peter...

👍👍

and their parents who paid to put them through school!!! (can you tell I did that?)

That's a great story @jeffgamby-hull8874. So glad your Great Uncle made it home, and past his century! 😁

Germany and Japan for that matter were never threats to North America. Pretty sure our lives would have been just fine.

The attack on the Death Star in the 1977 movie Star Wars, in which the space ships fly at full speed along the narrow corridor, was based on it. This was freely admitted by the Star Wars Director.

48 out of 133 survived...

Including standing for the US flag and others.

@@markshere1022 133 heroes

I agree with you with one exception. The uploader didn't produce this, it's some other organization that did the collection, editing, scripting, and narration... Edit: This upload is an actual example of copyright infringement if the upload is monetized. There is no credit given to the original production, no is it presented for debate or discussion. Claiming it as "For educational purposes" also requires at least some narration by the uploader to express that the intent was to educate.

@@nunyabidness674 good information but I would like to add...IF this is a copyright infringement to begin with.

I concur with the above comment. Please cut the horrible music altogether for such a documentary. I'll await the result before continuing to view it.

@@richarddold9522 it is awful but it is NOTHING compared to what these men went through. AND you can simply mute the sound and watch it with closed caption, which only had a few mistakes. It's very timely as the dams in Ukraine are being threatened as we speak.

They were terrorists, like ISIS.

@@peacenow42 If Putin had murdered thousands of civilians and POWs we would have called it a war crime.

In addition, without the R&D done on designing this bomb, we wouldn't have the highly efficient golf ball as we know it today. Something not many people is aware off. An unexpected spin off from the war effort. engineeringsport.co.uk/2009/10/27/what-has-golf-got-to-do-with-the-dambusters/

@@sorcererstone3303 Thousands of lives lost to make a better golf ball.

@@None-zc5vg Hey, I know what you are saying. But what I intended to convey was an spin off invention on something completely unrelated. Lots of people (civilians & military) from both sides did die from this operation. I acknowledge that. I was pointing out something others may not have noticed. Just like Velcro was a spin off invention from Apollo project, but does it mean we lost 3 good men at the launch pad (Apollo 1) for the sake of inventing dime a dozen Velcro? No. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies There is another quirky spin off (indirectly) from this Dam Buster raid - just in case not many people know. Apparently, there was an old movie named Dam Busters. And that movie was about this raid. Coincidentally, someone noticed our beloved original Star War movie, the section on the epic bombing raid on the Death Star (toward the end of that movie), was a copy cat from this old Dam Busters movie. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dam_Busters_(film)

Perhaps this video should be shown in math classes to underscore its effective uses.

ALL bomber crews were gallant,men, with an excellent use of what today would be considered simple navigation aids, the sheer audacity and guts of those young men will remain in history forever, sadly, many were killed on that operation.The RAF has lots of history. RAF crews, were never honored in the aftermath of war, how disgusting the British Government was to not even recognise their deeds and that, some time later, it was an Australian Rock Group The Bee Gee's who commenced and pursued the idea of a Bomber Command Monument , Myse;lf, I enjoyed 16 years in the Royal Air Force and enjoyed every minute of it, The men and the force itself are legendary.

How do you know ? Did you fly the mission?????

@@tellyonthewall8751 Haha, I was going to ask the same thing. Tipi, you twat.

Dave Shannon has his twenty-first birthday on the day the King and Queen came to visit the squadron after the raid. Shannon survived the War.

Probably was Aussie David Shannon who grew a moustache to make himself look older. He also got a DSO.

@@anthonyeaton5153 Thanks for this info!

While it casts no disrespect on the crews who flew this mission, there's a lot of truth in those assertions. Not the least of this is the fact that it cost the lives of some of Bomber Command's most experienced people. The raid, as it was eventually flown, was not done according to the original plan. The two dams that needed to be destroyed to create the kind of havoc intended were the Mohne and the Sorpe. The Eder was not part of the Ruhr steel industry. It was estimated that breaching only one of the two critical dams would realise only a fraction of the effect of the effect of hitting two. But as you now know, the Sorpe required a completely different style of attack and there simply wasn't time to develop a second attack profile and a second weapon. As to its necessity, that's pretty debatable. A lot of what Bomber Command did was pretty debatable. Unfortunately, that came down to its obstinate commander in chief, who was quite happy to waste lives on missions of dubious importance. While he obviously had no interest in this until after its (qualified) success - whereupon he tried to claim credit for it - it did highlight the importance of attacking infrastructure, even if the original concept was flawed. Harris' complete indifference to cooperation with other services and his distain for targets identified by those better versed than he, probably contributed to the staggering and sustained losses of bomber crews and did nothing to shorten the war.

They were terrorists, like ISIS.

I had two uncles that flew in there wellington! One as a pilot and the other as a navigator! Sadly the navigator died on his first bombing raid! the other uncle survived and used to come with us on our boating holiday and one day he was telling me what it was like doing torpedo runs in the med! Just as he was explaining how low he used to fly an RAF plane was flying as low as my uncle was expelling what he did and it had to pull up to miss us! That was surreal! May I just say thank you to your late dad for what he did for us all! We can never thank those brave souls back then! Thank you Sir and R.I.P My uncle I talked about died of cancer later in in life R.I.P Uncle Alf!

@@nigeldewallens1115 Thank you. You're right. The good life we live is all due to the actions of our fathers and grandfathers who fought in the war. I can't imagine how it was to strap yourself into the cockpit night after night knowing your chances of escaping a horrible death were so low.

@@bruceboome My surviving uncle did not tell me what that side was like but he did say you could see the crew running all over the place on a boat as you flew in low to drop your torpedoes! We are all very lucky frankly

You just made me wonder, how many people have the British armed services killed in the whole of history?

Yes, we owe everything to these young warriors...

Thank you for the kind words Russell, appreciated.

Good Comment But Why The Capitals For Every Word??? Lol

Linda, thank you for your kind comment. We bet you are very, very proud of your father?

And the some 1000 civilians killed in the valley after the attack, of course.

@@stardustbros6768 ....And the many thousands killed by blitz-style raids on major cities by both sides in WW2. (The deliberate bombing of civilians was initiated in WW1 by the Germans.) Both sides will argue forevermore that "the end justified the means".

@@patagualianmostly7437 just compare the 72,000 dead British civilians from ww1 and ww2 combinded, to the around 400,000 dead German civilians from ww2 alone. I don't care who started it, thats a childish excuse to not recognise all the civilian deaths caused by these tactics.

Looked like swans. Bet they got a fright!

I never knew about the Naval spinoff. However, flying a Mosquito at 60 feet within 1000 feet to drop a bomb and "skip bomb" the hull with a depth charge would have taken a massive set of guts. Gibson would have done it.

I read two books on this. One is called Ensmt Coast Ahead by Guy Gibson himself. This is about orgsnusing 617 Squadron up to the raid on the Mihne and Eder Dams. The other book is called The Dam Busters by Psul Brickhill. It is an ac out of 617 Suadron during the War. Both are very good accounts of the exploits of the Sqadron.

It's worth at least one mortgage payment ! 🤣

👏👏👏

Yes we do. Thank you.

dang, cool

It’s in the process of being brought back to flying condition at east Kirkby

When I was 14 years old in 1981 I was invited to visit 617 Squadron at RAF Scampton and got a personal tour of the interior of the Lancaster gatekeeper as well as a tour of a fully operational Vulcan that they were using at the time!

Pity the entire film was ruined by the most ridiculous sounding music at far too loud a level, this made the entire production difficult to follow. I'd suggest that the individual responsible for the unwarranted noise should stick to Kiddy Pops cartoons, certainly not important and serious film such as this film presents.

Yes, it was

Absolutely.there were great bombong missions in ww2. Taranto....doolitle over tokyo....stringbags against bismarck....dive bombing in battle of midway etc. But dambuster raid is up there on top. The vision, planning, technical ingenuity and bravery simply epic.

@the taker They were dedicated to the Battle of Britain pilots but Bomber Command had the highest rate of losses of British forces. I'd not deny them the same accolade.

You're very welcome.

Glad you enjoyed it Terrance...

The bonus was that workers were taken off the Atlantic wall projects which helped the invasion succeed

The Germans knew the problems that they were going to have the following year if the Dams were not repaired ASAP, so they threw tens of thousands of workers off other projects to be able to do it (Including a big chunk of the workforce earmarked to work on the Atlantic Wall). Harris could have attacked the repair effort to slow it down, but that would have resulted in a lot of dead Allied Civilians being used as forced labour, so politically it was a none starter.

Yes, Max Hastings book is a great read...

Guy Gibson, who had formed and led the raid was awarded the Victoria Cross in the London Gazette of 28th May 1943 (just 12 days after the Raid). That says it all...

​@@militaryaviationtvOne of the reasons he was awarded the VC was that after his own bombing run he used his own Lancaster to draw fire from the other Lancasters on their bombing runs.

@L SIMCOCK Yes , from 1965-68

different times.

Think they got that codeword from Guy Gibsons dog which was a black lab with the same name, named after a brand of paint apparently

@@SDeww Yep, nothing need to be said. Different times, different era. I just stiffened up the lip and moved on. Still a fascinating and well presented documentary.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing, sticks and stones!

tfs2O3 I bet you’re correct about the liberals.

Thank you sr633.

Lisa Burnett took the words right out of my mouth

There are heroes and leaders in every generation. They just need the right circumstances to come forward. You are living in a world of nostalgia if you think the past is a better time.

@@davidwordsworth5584 no. Not living in the past. But the present doesn't seem to hold the same calibre of a man to come forward and show the same kind of courage. Back then was not one, But thousands answered the call. Can you say that now. I think not. My regards.

@James Henderson And you would know. Laughable idiot.

I understand it's against the Geneva Conventions now to attack dams. I believe there are many who would answer the call. They wouldn't be the drug dealing raping toe rags that one sees all to often on news programs though..

Didn’t help him survive the war, though.

@@MothaLuva it seems that he was not shot down. Instead he had some sort of fuel feed problem that stopped both engines on his Mosquito.

@@duartesimoes508 Afaik, the fuel feed problem was caused by 4 MK 108 cannon of Major Kurt Welterˋs Me 262 B-1A/ U1 „red 10“.

John; thank you for your kind words. Yes, very brave chaps, and we must not forget their sacrifice.

Great memory David...