If you live in the UK — and have access to Channel 5 — you can catch a new three part TV documentary this week. Airing on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 9pm each night it is presented by Dan Snow with contributions from Max Hastings, Robert Owen and Victoria Taylor amongst others.
The series was filmed in lockdown conditions earlier this year. Come back to this website tomorrow at 9pm for an exclusive review!
Dambusters Blog 
Thank you, Charles, I hope all is well by you. Is there any way that we can get access to watch the programs from here? Regards, Hartley PS the other squadron people got hold of Cathy Somers (I don’t have details handy because they are on my home computer and I’m at work now)…
Can you email me please [email address redacted]
Thank you Charles for the notification. I’d already been told by a cousin in London it was to be on and could we get it here, but I don’t think so. In turn I notified those in England that it will be on and they were surprised how small the world has got and will notify those who have a special interest. My Son seems to have all the documentaries on his Grandfather and the Dam Busters etc.
Jon Snow is not my favourite historian but will watch to see how many errors he makes…
There were plenty and that’s not being picky, there were major glaring errors !
I must be watching a repeat of this – loving it so far, e.g. the story of someone accidentally pressing the drop bomb button when the plane was still in its hangar!
Trying to piece together what the impact of this raid was on the war effort – for instance the hydroelectric plants were ‘only’ knocked out for two weeks but the timing of that disruption can’t have been great for Hitler.
Operation Citadel (Kursk) had already been put back from 4 May to 12 June to await, amongst other things, the arrival of new and better tanks. Turning off electricity in the Ruhr for two weeks on 17th May must have been more than a little inconvenient for Hitler. It would be interesting to know whether this inconvenience influenced the decisions to further delay Citadel to 20th June and then 5th July. If Operation Chastise contributed to a three week delay in the launching of Operation Citadel, that must have had a massive impact. The Russians would have been bought precious weeks to improve vital defences informed by Tunny intercepts – given the superiority of German tanks and the heavy Russian losses even with these enhanced defences, it is frightening to think what the outcome might have been had the Germans been able to attack three weeks earlier. Furthermore, Hitler had to divert resources from Kursk to cover Sicily – given a few extra weeks in Kursk he may have had greater success there, which would then have had a knock on effect in resources available for his defence in the west, including the Battle of the Bulge.
Not at all sure about my timings, as it would take a long time to drive a tiger tank from Germany to Kursk, but the wider point is that in the middle of a desperate dogfight, a two week delay is not nothing!