Bombing Hitler's Dams 9 PM Tonight

Ickie

Ickie

SOH Administrator
NOVA (New)
[FONT=Verdana,Sans-Serif]905 WEDUDT: Wednesday, January 11 9:00 PM
Science, Nature, Anthology

Bombing Hitler's Dams
British engineer Barnes Wallis invents a bouncing bomb which the pilots of 617 Squadron use to destroy two dams in Germany during World War II.


Original Air Date: Jan 11, 2012[/FONT]
 
That was good stuff. Those Buffalo Airways guys are crazy. Did you catch how many hours the pilot had? 34,000? Dang. He got the DC-4 wet with the bomb splash on the final run, and we saw what that can do to an A-26 earlier! They dropped it from 40 feet! Cutting it a bit close there Arnie!
 
If BUFFALO was around in WW2...??....WOW! what great flying!...a crazy Idea that worked!...However at great cost to those air crews!. In Desperate times, people do Desperate things!..Great program.!!..I always wonder who Pays for these presentations???
 
One thing they covered in this show that I didn't understand at all, and will need to research, is the tests the USAF did on optimum altitude/airspeed/bomb RPM combinations late in the war. From the film they showed on NOVA, the plane used for the tests was an A-26 Invader. The NOVA narrator said the US guys started testing at “high” altitudes (250 feet) and slowly worked their way down. Well, the 50 foot run very nearly ended in disaster when the bomb bounced way higher than the 50 feet at which the A-26 was flying, missing the tail by inches. So if they were “making their way down” in successive tests, one would think the 50 foot run would have been the lowest one, no? No. They made a 25 foot run. This time the bomb did hit the tail, ripping it off and sending the hapless Invader into the sea, killing everyone on board. Surely the 25 foot run couldn't possibly have followed the 50 foot run...
 
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