Wrong. It took a special delivery system because of the minimum size of the bomb necessary to cause damage.
This is a piece of cake when you can simply motor up to the face of the damn dam and scuttle your boat.
Not that easy - I was at Hover dam last year and noticed that there were armed patrol craft making sure that no boats got too close.
Actually we're both 'wrong', and both 'right'.
Barns Wallace realized that it takes a lot of explosives to move that much earth, steel and concrete. He further realized that "a lot" got smaller the closer the explosion was to the target. Ultimately this lead to the skipping stone delivery system.
This is a very complicated system who's sole purpose was to deliver an explosive charge to wet side of the base of a dam. Air delivery forced bomb shape, size, materials (The bomb had to survive smacking into water repeatedly) and spin so it would skip just right.
All those complications would simply go away if the Germans had only let the Brits drive a lorry onto the dam, and push it over the side...
Not that easy - I was at Hover dam last year and noticed that there were armed patrol craft making sure that no boats got too close.
The Cole had armed guards.
Naturally, these highly trained military guards in charge of protecting a US warship, in port in a less than friendly country, in a very volatile part of the world weren't allowed to have ammo in their guns. That would offend Yemenis!
Intel had shown that there was an active threat in motion, and we still couldn't didn't stop the attack. I'm less sanguine about our ability to defend a dam or any other target in this country using bored guards in what is perceived as a low threat environment. A little distraction, a few well timed and placed RPGs and the path is clear.