Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Disclaimer: no dams were actually busted in the making of the video below. But that doesn’t mean that a scale-model homage to the WWII Dam Busters and their “Bouncing Bombs” isn’t worth doing, of course.
In a war filled with hacks, [Barnes Wallis]’ Bouncing Bomb concept might just be the hackiest. In the video below, [Tom Stanton] explains that [Wallis] came up with the idea of skipping a bomb across the surface of a lake to destroy enemy infrastructure after skipping marbles across the water.
[...] [Tom] teamed up with R/C builder [James Whomsley], who came up with a wonderful foam-board Lancaster bomber, just like RAF No. 617 Squadron used. With a calm day and smooth water on the lake they chose for testing, the R/C Lanc made a few test runs before releasing the first barrel bomb. The first run was a bit too steep, causing the bomb to just dive into the water without skipping. Technical problems and a crash landing foiled the second run, but the third run was perfect – the bomb skipped thrice while the plane banked gracefully away. [Tom] also tried a heavy-lift quadcopter run with the bomb rig, something [Barnes Wallis] couldn’t even have dreamed of back in the day.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ledow on Thursday November 28 2019, @08:44AM (1 child)
I am rarely nationalist but I have to say that *certain* elements from wartime really show you what you can do when your resources are stretched or limited, and certain decisions really made an impact - that we're still talking about them to this day.
Who, in the middle of the worst modern war ever experienced, where bread is in short supply and the country are starving, decided to fund some loon (a mite unfair, but basically true, although I'm not sure if the "Do you think that if you told him that I designed it [the plane], that that would help [get the funding for the bouncing bomb]?" is completely true) who wants to skim stones, some team who just sit trying to read codes all day, and invent the modern computer to do it (not to mention then go on to invent public-key cryptography and keep it secret for 50 years), etc.
Churchill's (apocryphal?) "Give them what they want" shows a presence of mind, instead of desperation. He knew lots of odd-ball projects would fail (in which case "then nobody would ever hear of them"), but he only needed one to work to help - and decades down the line they are still some of the most-talked-about events of the war, and really reinforce the brain-over-brawn rhetoric that they must have been pushing (though I don't doubt that an awful lot of brawn was really required anyway).
Obviously, we're cherry-picking the successes, and ignoring a lot of stuff that casts us in a less favourable light, but I *like* that we're being remembered in history as a bunch of geeks in a shed somewhere helping defeat the Nazi regime and all its machines of war.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Thursday November 28 2019, @05:03PM
While it may be cherry picking, I don't see the failures as casting a bad light. After all, even failures contribute to knowledge. With that said was there a failed project somewhere that led to the 'mad' idea of the bouncing bomb?
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @03:42PM (6 children)
But if we won, and don't get "tried", was it really a war crime?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 28 2019, @11:54PM (5 children)
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Friday November 29 2019, @01:13AM (4 children)
A/C might be saying that bombing the Ruhr dams was a war crime, because civilians were killed, which there might be an argument for, but not from me.
My mother's partner flew as a gunner in Hudson and Wellington bombers from 1942 to 1945 and was on a couple of the raids that fire bombed Dresden, which he felt bad about.
There might be an argument that those raids were war crimes, but Britain was in an existential fight, so the gloves were off.
I have similar feelings about the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for similar reasons.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @03:50AM (3 children)
> but Britain was in an existential fight
I've seen this (new?) usage for "existential" a few times lately. My internal definition matches this one:
https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/existential [vocabulary.com]
For the usage of parent, I'd be likely to write, "but Britain was in a fight for its existence"
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Friday November 29 2019, @04:08AM (2 children)
So the dictionary does indeed agree with this particular use of "existential".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 29 2019, @05:55PM (1 child)
Correct. As I wrote, I copied the definition that agreed with my internal definition, about philosophy.
Mostly wondering if it's just me, or if the "concrete" definition is commonly used?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 29 2019, @07:14PM
I see the "concrete" definition more often than the philosophical version FWIW.