Quote:
Originally Posted by Sailor Steve
Please elaborate.
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Sorry for being late
I just wanted to say that this mission "operation chastise" was not a real success, there were six targets in all, only two were "destroyed", or better damaged.
Nor was it entirely directed against the Ruhr valley. The Moehne dam was damaged, but failed to influence the Ruhr production (several dams downstream saw for that, the Eder dam had no link at all with the Ruhr valley, and the rest of the dams (4) were not damaged.
Drinking water support was already up in june, the dams completely rebuilt in september.
Harris had protested against this mission, however some others saw it as a nice propaganda coup and worth the effort.
The raid proved to be costly in lives (more than half the lives lost belonging to Allied POWs and forced-labourers), but was no more than a minor inconvenience to the Ruhr's industrial output. 53 of the 133 soldiers were killed during the mission, three bailed out and were captured.
From the 20 Lancaster bombers, eight were shot down or crashed, some others did not reach the target or had to return.
The value of the bombing can perhaps best be seen as a boost to British morale.
But then, the other strategic bombing on civilian targets had not much influence on the war production either, and it did not "break the will" as intended.