Dambuster veterans reunite for the last time-(must see video)

telegraph ^ | 5/17/08 | By Aislinn Simpson and Laura Clout

[Flavius]

The last surviving veterans of the Second World War Dambusters raid will meet for what is expected to be the last time on Saturday night to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the mission.

Engineers, ground staff and the last surviving pilot to fly one of the 19 modified Lancaster bombers of 617 Squadron will be amongst those at the gathering.

The veterans are now all in their late 80s and many have said they plan to make these anniversary celebrations their last.

Their mission, on May 16, 1943, to destroy German dams with Barnes Wallis’s bouncing bombs, has become part of the UK’s military heritage.

[wastedyears]

I need to go to an air show. Bad

[Bobalu]

Dam Busters documentary in 6 parts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0iYyhlp5v4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tsRvdJ-ZwRw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaKBENAyoV0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExO1LE80lvs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDEeVf1WEgg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFJDXM7YasA

[Bobalu]

if you want to save the documentary to your hd use http://keepvid.com/ save as the higher quality .mp4 file type. each part is about 40mb.

[eyedigress]

I just upgraded my cable today because I didn’t have speed channel to watch the races tomorrow. I got home and went over the line-up. I discovered the military channel was included. It’s been on all evening. Tonight it is Bataan, and Pearl Harbor. The heros of our past would be of short number today. It is very discouraging.

[Bender2]

Bump to watch later!

[Bobalu]

The Military chan rules!
That Dam Busters documentary has aired there.

[Oztrich Boy]

They usually had the time to clear the blast but still had fire coming at them in and out of the run, not every target was necessarily the same approach-wise or run-wise.

It had to be the same approach run, as they used the apparent separation between the towers on the dam wall to determine drop point.

[SuziQ]

Ping for later reading.

[eyedigress]

I’ve seen the documentary on the DAMBUSTERS at some point in the last 5 years. Maybe during a PBS pledge drive. The Military Channel is a must have. Tonite is my first exposure to it.
WOW!

[Bobalu]

Those without the Military Channel can grab many of the best shows and clips from youtube. Search using the show name for best results.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=military+channel&search_type=

[DieHard the Hunter]

> It had to be the same approach run, as they used the apparent separation between the towers on the dam wall to determine drop point.

That’s right! I remember in the early 1980’s I had a Coleco Adam, and one of the great games for that was “The Dambusters”. For the time and technology, it was brilliant: very realistically rendered, way ahead of its time.

You played all 7 roles simultaneously, switching between pilot and copilot and bombadier and guns and navigator...

IF you made it to the dam, you had to turn around a half-circle and drop to precisely 60 feet (reading the altimeter) and slow down the plane to just above stalling.

Then you had to spin the bomb until it hit a certain RPM. And when you had the towers precisely in sight, you had to drop the bomb and climb...

If you did it right, the bomb would skim along the water, its back-spin making it skip. It would hit the top of the dam, and the back-spin would drag it right down to the bottom, where it would detonate and (hopefully) explode, sending a shock-wave thru the water that would finish off the dam.

All the while you were dodging Flak and enemy night-fighters. A very difficult thing to do — even from the relative safety of a Coleco Adam. Lord Knows it would have been 1000x more difficult in the real thing.

I only completed the game mission once. Played it for hours.

[eyedigress]

I’ll pass that on. Thanks :^) (Watching TOJO get his just do. Jeremiah Wright’s audience needs to see this!)

[originalbuckeye]

A sweet aside for you all.......if you are ever in Britain at Christmastime, be sure to go to one of the many pantomimes offered (play of a nursery rhyme that is always fun). At the end of the show they always have a sing-along for the kids. One thing that is always done is a ‘dance’ to the Dambusters theme. All the kids are invited into the aisles and they raise their arms as if to fly and dance around to the theme. It is goosebump raising.

[DieHard the Hunter]

It’s a great theme, that one. I shall have to request it sometime at the FReeper Canteen.

The Battle of Britain March is also one of my favorites.

[originalbuckeye]

We were just humming it tonight. My husband (British) mentioned that it was the Dambusters anniversary so we had to have a little run around with our arms raised, humming the theme. I really do miss parts of the British experience.

[TYVets]

ping

[Gatún(CraigIsaMangoTreeLawyer)]

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[William Tell]

mamelukesabre said: "But then if they dropped the bomb early, why couldn’t the pilot pull up and veer to the side to avoid the impact area?"

Your typical dam is built across a river flowing through a canyon. The canyon walls usually rise considerably higher than the top of the dam. The bombers used in the attack would have a rate of climb that would probably be insufficient to climb from attack height to the top of the canyon walls in a distance equal to half the canyon width.

Some years ago I recall using Flight Simulator to fly a small Cessna from South Lake Tahoe to the south, only to find that the rate of climb of the plane is insufficient to make it out of the lake basin and the basin narrows making it impossible to turn the plane around.

[mamelukesabre]

Oh no. I wonder if anyone has ever found that out with a real cessna?

[William Tell]

mamelukesabre said: "Oh no. I wonder if anyone has ever found that out with a real cessna?"

I don't know about that particular issue, but there is a ridge near that airport which our realtor said was called "tin pan alley" because of the planes crashing into it. We've owned a place up there since 1985 and I don't recall hearing of any crashes. Maybe they don't make the news.