Slashdot Mirror
1935 Meccano "Dam Busters" Computer Restored
rob1959 writes "A 1935 analog computer, built at Cambridge University and used to help plan the Dam Busters attacks on the Ruhr hydro dams in World War II, has been restored and put on display at Auckland's Museum of Transport and Technology. The computer came to NZ around 1950 and was used, ironically, to build hydro dams there — and to calculate rabbit population numbers."
This is /. - we're likely to be the last of our family lines!
TFA also mentions the recent sad death of Donald Michie - a major force in early British computing. I had the honour of working with him on 'Freddy' the robot back in 1973 - back when the UK led the world in robotics.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
I read the book years ago. In it the designers built a tank and used marbles as scale model bombs. It doesn't say anything about a computer used in the design. I wonder if information about the computer was left out for reasons of security.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
However, some 20,000 workers were diverted for months from building the Atlantic sea wall defences to repair the dams, which had far-reaching effects on D-Day.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Tactically, the dam raid did not cause the catastrophic industrial disruption which had been hoped for, and the lack of a follow-up raid to suppress repairs meant that the Germans could recover. But strategically, Wikki has this to say:
" The strategic view
The Dams Raid was, like many British air raids, undertaken with a view to the need to keep drawing German defensive effort back into Germany and away from actual and potential theatres of ground war, a policy which culminated in the Berlin raids of the winter of 1943-44. In May 1943 this meant keeping the Luftwaffe and anti-aircraft defence forces' effort away from the Soviet Union; in early 1944, it meant clearing the way for the aerial side of the forthcoming Operation Overlord.
By far the greatest and most unexpected effect was on German food production. The Ruhr valley below the dams was a major source of vital food for Germany, and large areas of arable land were rendered unusable and huge numbers of farm animals were killed. This had an immediate negative effect on German morale. In addition, the pictures of the broken dams proved to be a morale boost to the Allies, especially to the British, still suffering under German bombing."
And of course, a major effect was to pursuade Harris to support Barnes Wallis's greatest contribution, the Tallboy and Grand Slam supersonic precision earth penetrators. These stopped the V2 and the V3, and sunk the Tirpitz, and well as the U-Boat pens at St Nazaire. The Americans wished they had something like them, and are only now developing something similar for use against Iran.