FAQ

Eight Lancaster bombers were lost on the raid, each of which carried 7 crewmembers. However 3 men were able to parachute to safety and spend the rest of the war as prisoners so overall losses of aircrew were 53 dead in total.

A subject of fierce debate even to this day. For the loss of 8 Lancaster bombers and 53 men the raid was able to inflict severe damage on 2 major German dams resulting in the loss of electricity for large parts of the German industrial region of The Rhur for 2 weeks, flooding factories and mines and killing 1600 people. German coal production dropped by 400,000 tons as a result of the raid and over 7000 workers had to be diverted from other tasks to repair the damage. Nazi Germany's head of industry Albert Speer later remarked "That night, employing just a few bombers, the British came close to a success which would have been greater than anything they had achieved hitherto with a commitment of thousands of bombers." However Speer said the raid was ultimately unsuccessful because there was no follow-up raid. Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris regarded Operation Chastise as a complete failure. However Harris' beloved policy of area bombing had taken a lot more casualties whilst accomplishing a great deal less. A single raid on Nuremberg in March 1944 resulted in the loss of 95 bombers in return for 72 dead Germans and 130 buildings destroyed.

The raids succeeded in breaching the Mohne and Eder dams and the reserve aircraft then attacked the smaller Sorpe, Ennepr and Bever dams but inflicted little or no damage.

Guy Gibson would be awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest decoration for gallantry. However he was tragically killed on another mission later on in the war. Barnes Wallace would later develop the 'Tallboy' and 'Grand Slam' giant penetrator bombs which were used to sink the German battleship Tirpitz and destroy heavily protected German targets such as U-boat pens. Gibson's own crew, Spafford 'Spam', Taerum 'Terry', Hutchison 'Hutch', Deering 'Tony', Trevor-Roper 'Terry' were killed on a bombing mission on the night of 16 September 1943.