A Dam Buster. - a photo on Flickriver

A Dam Buster.

In May 1943, 617 Squadron of the Royal Air Force attacked and destroyed three dams in the German Ruhr Valley with special bouncing bombs developed by Barnes Wallis. Many years later, a film was made of the story and I remember watching it as a fascinated kid and seeing the challenge, frustration and subsequent success of work to perfect and deliver the bombs.

One of the things that stood out in my young mind were the scenes shot from inside the aircraft in the movie as they came in at just the correct height above water towards the heavily fortified dam walls to enable the bombs to bounce exactly as designed and land up against and sink beside the dam walls. And those scenes looked a bit like this one looking across the lake towards the wall of Somerset Dam, north west of Brisbane. If you look closely on the right hand end of the dam, there is a bomber of sorts obscured there!

Firstly, a link to the Wikipedia article on the original operation.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chastise

Somerset Dam served as Brisbane’s major water supply dam from its opening in 1959 until the larger Wivenhoe Dam was opened downstream in 1984. Unfortunately, the dam wall is a straight wall hemmed in across the valley north east of Esk on the Stanley River, a tributary of the Brisbane River and although beside the road, a quite difficult dam to photograph from almost any angle. It also has a small hydro-electric plant on top which has been used on and off over the years and access to and across the dam wall is not permitted to the public.

Here is a link to local Flickr member, Jim Cassidy’s recently uploaded shot of the dam.

flic.kr/p/2j6Za2c

Thanks to Jim for getting this challenging shot and I hope my view compliments his of this site.

And lastly, here is a link to another article on the dam.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Dam

Taken on: May 25, 2020

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