Barnes Wallis

[J.R.]

Am I allowed to print it in these days of P.C. ??

Oh - What the heck.

Guy Gibson's black labrador was named Nigger.

[Fjgrogan]

Yes, I realise that! My point was that by leaving out the dog, they presumably had to also cut any mention of the codewords for the breaking of the various dams, one of which was the dog's name. Anyway, I see that on BBC2 tomorrow at 7.00pm there is a programme called The Dambusters: 70 years On, and on Saturday on Channel 5 there is the film of The Dam Busters at 3.35pm followed at 6.05pm by Last of the Dambusters: Revealed - I wish they would decide whether it should be one word or two! Also the current Radio Times has a two page article (pages 19/20) entitled The Last Dambuster. I wonder if we shall be any wiser once we have watched all that! Presumably though this time I won't get to cry when the dog gets runover!

[Kit Bartlett]

Political correctness has decreed that the well known Agatha Christie play renamed "Ten Little Indians" is now called "And then there were none". Was there not also a Kiwi brown shoe polish with the dreaded word.? What is that colour now called I wonder? It is surprising that the feminist/sexist brigade has not queried why the shout "Man Overboard" is still used in ships.

[Fitzsadou]

In response to Michael Scuffil, I was unaware of these facts. Can he give a source for them?

Does anyone know why the dams existed? Did they allow hydroelectric power to be produced, store water that was consumed (by domestic or industrial customers, or both), reduce flooding, or had they some other purpose? An important question is whether their function was restored rapidly, quite apart from their rapid physical reconstruction.

[Avon]

Most were repaired swiftly, but the repairs were hasty and the reservoirs could not be fully filled. The flood damage was extensive and had the desired effect on manufacturing capability.

Destruction to such sites is no longer permitted - something we learned in 2003 when trying to find ways of giving the marsh Arabs near the Shatt al Arab a bit of a wash.

[Jabod2]

Am I allowed to print it in these days of P.C. ??

Oh - What the heck.

Guy Gibson's black labrador was named Nigger.

It was suggested that a defence against Scampton's proposed use as an immigrant centre could be that the ghost of Guy calling his dog could cause severe distress...

[Misterbee]

Towards the end of my time at Housey I had the privilege of meeting Sir Barnes Wallace on a few occasions. Unfortunately never on a one to one basis but as part of small groups. It always struck me as odd that as someone the school virtually rejected during his time there, he was very supportive of the institution and what it stood for.
Many years (24) after leaving I was part of a group of “ Scientists and Engineers” trying to return to the UK from a mission inthe USA. We were stuck at Dulles International awaiting an RAF transport aircraft. Unfortunately all RAF planes had been diverted to Saudi in support of our input into Gulf War 1. As we sat twiddling our thumbs, someone suggested there must be an alternative solution to our dilemma. That drew a comment from someone else on the lines of “Barnes Wallace would have sorted this out” At that point I interjected “ knowing him - it would have an exceedingly simple solution” . Yet another voice piped up asking “ What do you mean - knowing him?”. To which I replied that I had met him as a school boy. Then from the far corner of our group a rather accusatorial voice said “when we’re you at Housey” . Totally taken aback I looked at the speaker and said “obviously about the same time as you”. That gentlemen and I had worked together on a number of projects in recent years and even shared the same mess-room, yet he was only the second Old Blue I had encountered since leaving in 67. Needless to say we then played catch up!
Sir Barnes Wallace then crept into my life about 10 years later. My widowed sister, who was about 18 years my senior, introduced me to her new partner. He was the best part of 10 years older than her. We were talking and he said that my sister had told him I’d been educated at CH. I confirmed this and the next thing he said was that he had known Barnes Wallace during the war and that he understood the BW was formerly at CH. I confirmed it was so. I asked him in what context he had known BW and he replied that he had been a squadron leader in in 617 squadron. He speedily emphasised he was never a Dambuster as his CO had been Group Captain Leonard Cheshire. It was whilst in this group that he had worked with BW on the development of the Tallboy and Grandslam bombs. Also he had taken part in all three raids, along with those lads in 9 Squadron, on the Tirpitz, the third raid being the one that got it. It was then his turn to be surprised when he asked me the nature of my work. I told him - Scientist specialising in explosives and explosives ordnance. His name was Squadron Leader Tony Iveson one of the finest gentleman I ever had the pleasure to know. As for Sir Barnes Wallace, yes he might have had some small influence in my life, however I think more so as a catalyst!

[MrEd]

I will tell you two things about the Dambusters raid that were not mentioned in the film.

1) 1200 civilians were killed, most of them forced labourers from Poland.
2) The Möhne Dam was rebuilt within four months. The other two were barely scratched.

It achieved nothing.

It was a horrific loss of life, but there was no way not to have killed them. Those slave labourers were going to die anyway, grim but true. The German Labour organisations were working people to death, and AIUI, most of them were captured from Soviet territory and at war's end, had they survived, would have been handed back to Stalin for liquidation (as with Operation Keelhaul, around 2,000,000 prisoners were handed over to Stalin, including White Russians and Cossacks who had lost the Russian Civil War post-WW1), most of whom died in the GULAGs.

The RAF put no effort into impeding the reconstruction of the dam, much to the bafflement of the Germans (from what I have read). What this raid was was the start of accurate, precision bombing, rather than 'area bombing', and it gave an impetus to Wallis's other developments, the (highly accurate) Tallboy and Grand Slam bombs, which definitively ended the era of the battleship, destroyed a V-3 site near Calais and destroyed the Bielefeld viaduct by the 'earthquake' action, shaking the spans down and paralysing German transport, and they were also used against U-boat pens in France. Had they been available around a year sooner, the Tallboys and Grand Slams might well have made a huge contribution towards the war, and have saved many Allied lives too.