There doesn't seem to be much hard evidence that any serious disruption was caused to German production. Locally, towns and factories were destroyed, railways disrupted, etc but repairs were effected very quickly.

In retrospect and with the benefit of hindsight, conventional bombing raids while the dams were under repair could have been effective. However, this theory rather ignores the problems of navigation and target-finding in mid-1943 : 617 Squadron flew on a clear night at very low level, and even then they still had real problems locating the targets - and half the Squadron was shot down or crashed. 'Carpet-bombing' by Main Force would in all probability have missed the dams anyway ; they may be big when you stand next to them but they're very small from 15,000ft - in the dark.... [img]graemlins/no.gif[/img]

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