A dam good effort

AS the aircraft rose, the bomb bounced across the surface of the reservoir and exploded.

A plume of water shot 1,000ft into the sky.

And then the dam bust.

Suddenly, 330 million tons of water had nothing to hold it back. It rolled in a terrible tidal wave 32ft high down the river valleys, washing through homes and factories, drowning more than 1,000 people and delivering a dreadful blow to the German war effort.

With the mayhem unfolding below him, at 00:53 on May 17, 1943 – 70 years ago next Friday – Flt Sgt Nicholson set the course for 280 degrees, and his Lancaster headed for home.

Job done.

What must Nicholson have thought? He was an apprentice joiner from Sherburn, County Durham, and only 20 years old. This historic raid – perhaps the most extraordinary of the Second World War – was his first operational sortie.

Was he scared as the antiaircraft bullets peppered the sky? Was he frightened as, one by one, he noted other Lancasters fall to the ground? Was he concerned about what was happening on the ground to the civilians of the Ruhr valley?

Was he proud of the part he’d played in this daring and brilliantly-executed raid? Was he jubilant when the dam burst? Was he aware that he had written himself into history, that he had become a dambuster?

Britain had been planning the raid since 1938. The reservoirs of the Ruhr region provided hydro-electric power and water to the German war industry, and they kept the German waterways afloat.

They were an obvious target – if Britain could work out a way of hitting them.

Barnes Wallis was the genius who did, using the principle of a stone skimming across water. He devised the bouncing bomb that would hop across the surface of the reservoir, bump into the dam, sink to the bottom of the wall, and explode.

To put it into action, highly skilled aircrew were needed.

They had to approach at a steady height – only 60ft – and at a steady speed – 230mph – with their bomb spinning backwards at 500rpm so it got the right bounce off the water.

On March 17, 1943, Squadron 617 was put together under Wing Commander Guy Gibson.

ONE of those called upon was Flt Sgt Nicholson, one of Arthur and Elizabeth Nicholson’s eight boys. After school, he’d joined the family joinery business, but, on February 18, 1941, before his 18th birthday, he had volunteered to join the RAF.

He’d spent the best part of two years training – in Canada and the US – to be a navigator, and in March 1943 found himself at RAF Scampton, in Lincolnshire, preparing for a secret mission over water.

It was only when briefing began at 6pm on May 16 – the night of a full moon – that he discovered that he was to be part of Operation Chastise, using bouncing bombs against the Möhne Dam.

The briefing took two hours, and at 9.20pm, he was airborne – “chocks away”, he enthusiastically scribbled in the general observations column of his logbook.

He was part of the sevenman crew of ED 906 AJ-J, piloted by Flight Lieutenant David Maltby. In turn, AJ-J was one of 19 Lancasters heading in three waves for the dams.

At 10.10pm, they were over the Wash, and tested the two spotlights that kept them at 60ft – the angled spotlights were attached to either end of the plane and where the beams converged was exactly 60ft above the ground.

Then they dropped to 30ft to keep below German radar, but as they crossed the border between Holland and Germany, Lancaster AJ-B became tangled in pylon wires and exploded.

All seven crew members died.

Shortly before 1am, AJ-J and the first wave of bombers was over the Möhne Dam. It was defended by three antiaircraft, or ak-ak, guns, and the reservoir was full of torpedo nets.

“Contact ak,” wrote Nicholson in his logbook, which was only made public last month.

“Circling.”

Gibson in AJ-G went in first.

His bomb bounced on the water’s surface, but exploded less than 50 yards short of the dam, sending up a huge plume of water but not doing any damage.

AJ-M went second. It was struck by anti-aircraft fire causing its bomb to be delivered late. It bounced over the dam and exploded in a powerstation; then AJ-M burst into flames. Only two of its crew survived.

AJ-P went third. Its bomb unaccountably veered off to the left and exploded harmlessly in the reservoir.

AJ-A went fourth. Its bomb bounced three times, hit the dam and exploded – but the dam appeared to have withstood the blast.

AJ-J received its wireless message from Gibson to begin its run at the target. “Receive ok,” wrote Nicholson. “Flak.”

The run-in began at 48 minutes past midnight. It must have flashed by: at 230mph, the Lancaster covered the 1,500 yards across the water in 15 seconds. The spotlights on the reservoir’s surface showed they were flying at precisely 60ft but at the last second, Flt Lt Maltby noticed that AJ-A’s bomb had damaged the dam. He altered course slightly so that AJ-J’s bomb bounced towards an undamaged section.

Nicholson’s logbook only surfaced last month when it was put up for auction in Oxfordshire. It was withdrawn from sale while its ownership was investigated. It includes his Biggles-like phrase “Bomb dropped. Wizard.”

“Bomb dropped,” wrote Nicholson. “Wizard.”

The Upkeep bomb bounced four times, hit the dam, dropped to the bottom and exploded in a vast shower.

AJ-J pulled up. Nicholson looked down. Besides a great deal of slapping about, nothing seemed to have happened.

“Send message,” wrote Nicholson, and the message tapped out to headquarters was “Goner 78A” – hit target but no damage.

GIBSON was preparing AJ-L for its approach when, as the waves subsided, someone noticed that the dam was crumbling.

Water was pouring out into the valley below – in fact, from the air, they could see car headlights being swept along by the tsunami.

Barnes Wallis is among the people watching the secret test of his bouncing bomb on the Kent coast

Gibson called off AJ-L and took the three Lancasters still with their payloads on a 12 minute flight to join the second wave of Operation Chastise, which was about to attack the Eder dam.

Job done, in AJ-J, navigator Nicholson set the course for home. They touched down at RAF Scampton at 3.11am.

Nicholson’s notes showed they had flown 954 miles in 289-anda- quarter minutes.

What relief he must have felt. Of the 19 Lancasters that were counted out, only 11 were counted back in.

Of the 133 crew that set off with Nicholson, 53 were killed and three were captured.

The Northern Echo reported news of the “spectacular attack”

One of Barnes Wallis’ Upkeep bouncing bombs beneath the wing of a Lancaster

the following morning.

It said: “For many weeks, picked crews have been training for one operation, states the Air Ministry News Service.

They worked in complete secrecy on a bomber station which was cut off from contact with the outside world.

“The Lancaster crews knew how much depended on their success or failure. The opportunity might never come again and it was an opportunity, as they knew, of doing as much damage as could be done by thousands of tons of bombs dropped on many nights running.”

The Echo’s report said: “Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command, congratulated the crews and told them they ‘had won a major victory, the effects of which will last until the Boche is swept away in the flood of final disaster’.”

THERE is great debate about the Dambusters’ operation. They successfully burst two dams and damaged the German effort.

They also swept several thousand civilians to their deaths, including Russian women and Prisoners of War who were working in enforced labour camps along the rivers.

Vivian Nicholson, right, with a friend, Mick Smith, in Alabama, US, in December 1941

The Germans threw 2,000 workers at the Möhne Dam, who rebuilt it within four months – rather surprisingly untroubled by further British air attacks. Although the damage was quickly repaired, the men were drawn from Normandy where they were supposed to have been preparing defences that could have defeated D-Day.

So, Operation Chastise was not a wasted effort, and its spectacular nature provided a huge moral boost back home.

Nicholson was one of three in his plane to be decorated.

The citation spoke of “the extraordinarily high standard of crew co-operation… and the greatest sense of duty in the face of opposition and other difficulties”.

As he received his Distinguished Flying Medal at Buckingham Palace, his mother, Elizabeth, wrote that “boys (looked)… so young, so happy, so beautiful”.

Exactly four months after busting the dams, all w e r e dead.

On September 15, 1943, AJ-J, with the same crew on board, was taking one of the new Tallboy bombs – c o n t a i n i n g 12,000lb of explosive – to drop on the Dortmund- Ems canal near Ladbergen, in Germany.

A Lancaster bomber over the Derwent dam in the Peak District in 2008 – the crews practised on the dam immediately before Operation Chastise

Unfortunately, the weather closed in and Operation Garlic was aborted. As they returned, the Lancaster was caught in the slipstream of another plane and it crashed into the North Sea.

The body of the newly-promoted Flight Sergeant Vivian Nicholson DFM, the Dambuster of Sherburn, was never recovered.