Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnews!military
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Dambusters
Message-ID: <1990Sep13.012143.16489@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 13 Sep 90 01:21:43 GMT
References: <1990Sep6.154012.24850@cbnews.att.com> <1990Sep7.205425.13488@cbnews.att.com> <1990Sep12.014715.28633@cbnews.att.com>
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From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
>From: cognos!geovision!pt@dciem (Paul Tomblin)
>I read BOTH versions of the book "The Dam Busters", the history of the
>617 squadron that did this raid.  The 1950s version of the book implied 
>that the bombs were spherical, but the 1970s version, which "contains 
>material not previously cleared for publication", shows that they were 
>actually barrel shaped.  Anybody know why the British, would want to keep 
>that a secret for so long? ...

I suspect it was just reflex secretiveness; the British are bad about that.
As I recall from a biography of Barnes Wallis, there is no great mystery
about the change:  the bombs were originally intended to be spherical, but
it turned out to be difficult to make a spherical casing that large using
existing facilities, and taking it in a bit at the waist :-) made production
much easier.
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