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From: ab3o+@andrew.cmu.edu (Allan Bourdius)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Attacking Iraqi Dams and Rivers
Message-ID: <1990Sep14.042607.1235@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 14 Sep 90 04:26:07 GMT
References: <1990Sep12.014552.28304@cbnews.att.com>
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From: Allan Bourdius <ab3o+@andrew.cmu.edu>
Have you ever heard of 617 Squadron, Royal Air Force?

In 1943 (it might have been 1942, I'm not exactly sure) they broke the
Mohene and the Sorpe dams in the Ruhr Valley in Germany.  In addition to
the great flood damage that the onrush of millions of gallons of water
caused, the dam breaking crippled the German steel industry because the
German method of steel making required over three times as much water as
the Bessemer Process.

The attack was carried out with cylindrical shaped bombs that were sent
skipping (yes, skipping) across the surface of the lake to the point
right against the face of the dam.  The British engineer who designed
the bombs, Sir Barnes Wallis, determined that the distance and period of
the skip could be controlled so as to place the weapon directly against
the face of the dam.  Through experiments with scale models, Wallis
determined that a only a relatively small charge was needed to break the
dam because of the enormous weight of water pushing against the face of
the dam.

I suppose it would be feasible to attack dams in Iraq, however we would
have to explode a bomb (at least a 2000lb, I would assume, probably
greater)  at the center of the dam at a set depth below the surface.  I
really don't know how we'd go about guiding the weapon to its target
though--laser guidance *might* work, but I'd think there'd be a problem
with refraction because of the water.

For a better telling of the story of 617 Squadron, read "The Dam
Busters" by Paul Brickhill.  It's a fantastic tale of ingenuity,
heroism, and victory.

MIDN 3/C Allan Bourdius
Carnegie Mellon University NROTC