The Dambusters

The Dam Busters - Perspectives in the Wake of Katrina

I was trying to think of other floods that took out an industrialized city. One thing I thought of was the Dam Busters mission - March 1943. In 1943 the Royal Air Force mounted a daring mission to breach the dams over the Ruhr river in Germany. The goal was to flood out the industrial heartland of Germany. The raid was partially successful, 1200 people were killed outright, and 20,000 workers were diverted to repairing damage cause by the raid. If the raid had been completely successful, damage in the Ruhr would have been the wartime equivalent to hurricane Katrina. As it would turn out, in the months to come most German cities faced destruction at least as great as that doled out by Katrina, most notably the firebombing of Dresden.

The Dambusters