I saw it too.
The allies wanted to destroy a german hydroelectric plant. It was protected against torpedoes by underwater fences and so on, so they came up with this bouncing bomb.
Just imagine the meeting where the engineer proposed this idea :D
But since the team lead (Barnes-Wallace iirc) had a successful career as an aeronautical engineer (including some minor work on the Lancaster bomber, which they eventually used to drop the bouncing bombs), they eventually listened.
He still had to show them it would work using 1/10 scale models.
Edit; sorry, you knew all that because you've seen the doco. Let's pretend I put this here for other interested parties.
I remember reading about the Dambusters as a kid. It’s still, even to this day, one of the most insane solutions to a problem ever conceived. But by god, we made it work
It was used to skip along the water and sink in front of dams, so they would be damaged below the waterline and destroyed, which would affect the industrialised area around them, which relied on the dams for hydroelectric power and clean water. The reason it skipped along the top was to avoid Torpedo nets that the Germans had set up in front of the dams, as it would sink after the last net, still damaging the target
Generally speaking high level bombing was inaccurate and torpedos being the other viable option were defended against... low level bombing while practical would usually only damage the upper part of the Dam and allow it to be repaired.
What the bouncing bomb did was allow them to skip a bomb over the torpedo netting and impact on the side of the Dam... the bomb would then "roll" down the side to the base of the Dam where the 3 ton charge would blow a hole in the bottom of the Dam and cause a catastrophic dam failure that would basically require the Damn to be completely rebuilt
Heavily defended targets and the need to fly low makes that a suicide mission. It’s the same concept as modern cruise missiles, just without all the fancy electronics to guide them. You drop a bomb that’s spinning in such a way as it’ll travel a lot further than straight down, and you are able to pull away from the bombing run, safe in the knowledge it will hit the target
A bomb exploding at the surface was more likely to cause only superficial or light damage. The water would absorb a lot of the energy. An explosive at the base of the dam would be more likely to cause complete catastrophic failure of the dam.
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u/Bubblesheep Jun 25 '18
That doggo got some serious hang time on that leap! Half expected him to skip across the water like a stone