May 16

London, England • May 16, 1943 At least since 1937, 2 years before the out­break of Euro­pean hosti­lities, British intel­li­gence had looked into devel­oping alter­na­tive ways to destroy German facto­ries in the Ruhr Valley, Germany’s indus­trial heart­land. One sugges­tion was to attack dams in the Ruhr region. The idea was to blow up the dams or…

London, England · May 16, 1943 At least since 1937, two years before the out­break of Euro­pean hosti­lities, British intel­li­gence had looked into devel­oping alter­na­tive ways to de­stroy Ger­man facto­ries in the Ruhr Valley, Ger­many’s indus­trial heart­land. Late on this date in 1943 in Germany, a Brit­ish squad­ron of nine­teen modi­fied Avro Lan­caster bombers, each…