The forgotten victims of the Dambusters raid
The Dambusters raid is one of World War II’s best-known aerial bombardments, but stories of this British triumph often obscure its frightening death toll.
Image: Photograph of the breached Möhne Dam showing the extent of the flooding | Public Domain
The Dambusters raid has gone down in history as one of Britain’s most glorious contributions to vanquishing Nazi Germany. We all know the established story, not least from the classic 1955 film The Dam Busters.
One night in May 1943, a plucky squadron of the Royal Air Force (RAF) sprang surprise bombing attacks on German dams at astonishingly close range. Two of these dams took severe damage, putting German power stations, factories and mines out of action.
However, the whole episode wasn’t quite as spectacular for the British as government propaganda back home implied. The death toll ran far higher than even the campaign’s original architects had anticipated. As Sky HISTORY’s World War II with Tom Hanks begins on Tuesday, 26th May, we scrutinise the startlingly heavy human cost of the Dambusters raid.
How the Dambusters Raid was conceived
The Dambusters raid was the brainchild of English engineer Sir Barnes Wallis, who was trying to figure out an effective way to bomb German dams. These dams were protected by nets designed to prevent torpedoes from inflicting meaningful damage.
Wallis realised that bombs could potentially be bounced across the water, enabling them to bypass the nets. However, this would require a great level of dexterity on the pilots’ part. The aircraft would need to be moving at about 240mph while dropping the bomb from just 60 feet above the water.
The bomb itself (though it would be more technically correct to call it a mine) also had to be specially designed for the job. Codenamed ‘Upkeep’, the explosive would be dropped from Lancaster bombers flown by RAF Bomber Command’s 617 Squadron. Still, the audacious mission as a whole remained tremendously risky, as history would end up tragically proving.
A war of attrition in the air?
Operation Chastise (the RAF’s official name for the Dambusters raid) got underway in May 1943 with 19 Lancaster bombers flying out to western Germany. Between them, these bombers carried 133 aircrew in total. Their targets were the dams of Möhne, Edersee and Sorpe, with the distinguished ace pilot Guy Gibson as the squadron’s commanding officer.
If there was any bad omen for how the operation would unfold, it was surely the unexpected death of Gibson’s beloved dog just beforehand. In any case, the raid itself on the night of 16th/17th May initially appeared to be a success. The Möhne and Edersee dams were both breached, sending gallons of floodwater gushing into local areas.
Conversely, the Sorpe dam incurred only minor damage. This could have been considered a small setback if it weren’t for heavy losses on the British side, with eight aircraft and 53 aircrew perishing. Another three of the aircrew were captured as prisoners of war (POWs). Overall, then, the Dambusters raid had cost the 617 Squadron almost half its aircraft and crew.
A soberingly lethal operation
It’s important to highlight the kaleidoscope of nationalities among those who lost their lives as a result of the Dambusters raid. Of the 53 aircrew killed, 13 were from the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF), while two were members of the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF).
The same point can be made about those casualties claimed by the floods. Estimates of the death numbers have varied. At first, the tally was thought to have totalled 1,294. This figure included 749 foreign POWs, including from France, Belgium and Ukraine.
Estimates were later revised upwards to about 1,600, including around 1,000 foreign POWs and forced labourers, mainly from the Soviet Union. Such shifting figures reflect the difficulty of discerning the true extent of the chaos unleashed by the Dambusters raid. Some commentators today argue that the campaign gave the British little more than a PR boost.
The legacy of the Dambusters raid
Of the 133 Dambusters, only 48 lived long enough to see VE (Victory in Europe) Day two years later. Gibson survived the raid and was subsequently awarded the Victoria Cross, but failed to return from another bombing mission in September 1944. His remains were later found among the wreckage of a crashed plane in the Netherlands.
The last surviving Dambuster, Johnny Johnson, died in 2022. In recent years, the Dambusters raid’s impact has been reassessed by historians. Nazi authorities’ hasty efforts to repair the dams drained valuable German resources at a pivotal stage of the war.
This blow would have counted significantly in the Allies’ favour as D-Day – the ‘beginning of the end’ for the Nazis – approached.
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