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Comment by arprocter | Hacker News Reader

They came up with an ingeniously simple way to tell if the plane was at the correct altitude over the water

http://www.thedambusters.org.uk/height.html

I always thought this was the more nuanced but clever part of the operation.

That said, I would hate to have been one of the test pilots for the barrels. One of them bounced too high, and ripped the plane in half.

Bomber command had horrific rates of death.

Of a total of about 125,000 men about 55,000 died.

This is what surprised me about the Wikipedia article - you would think they would have mentioned the simple yet clever way that the crew could ensure that they were at the correct release height over the water using spotlight beams.

From the article: "Height was checked by a pair of intersecting spotlight beams, which, when converging on the surface of the water, indicated the correct height for the aircraft - a method devised for the raid by Benjamin Lockspeiser of MAP," I didn't look to see when this was added.

I searched for the phrase 'light' on the article when I looked at it, but didn't see this. Someone may have seen this thread and added it perhaps? Useful addition in any case, and I hope it stays.

EDIT: Actually I may have searched for 'lights', which would have returned no results, so perhaps my bad after all.

If you look at the page history, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bouncing_bomb&act..., the last edit was on November 6.

Well why don't you add it yourself then? :)

Because some bot will automatically moderate it away? That's what's happened every time I've made even minor spelling corrections on wikipedia.

I was told that the inventor came up with the idea while at the theatre with his wife. As the spotlights converged on a performer, the idea sprung to mind, and he yelped "I've got it!"

Quite possibly embellished, but plausible that should be the inspiration.

That's certainly how the film The Dambusters depicts it.

It's really interesting to read the history of Bomber Command.

Max Hastings has a good book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bomber-Command-Pan-Military-Classic...

I mention it because the book talks about the problem they had with targeting, and refinements they made.

It also talks about the change in attitudes about targeting civilians, from being a war crime that must be avoided at the beginning, to being the only thing that could stop the war at the end.

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