Sorpe

The Sorpesee is an artificial lake near to Sundern.

Geography

The Sorpesee belongs to the Sauerland.

Neighbouring municipalities

*Balve
*Sundern

The dam

The Sorpe dam is 9 miles south-west of the Moehne dam, but unlike the Mohne and Eder gravity dams this is an earth dam.

It was built between 1927 and 1935 and at 200 feet (61 meters) in height it was Germany's highest such dam.It was 700 yards (640 metres) long and held back 70 million tonnes of water.

The Attack

Due to various problems only two Lancasters reached the Sorpe - Joe McCarthy in AJ-T "Tommy"(the reserve aircraft for the second wave) and Brown in AJ-F "Freddie". This attack differed from those on the gravity dams in two ways - the "Upkeep" bomb was not rotated and the attack was made along the length of the dam, not at right angles over the reservoir.

McCarthy arrived over the dam at 0015hours and realised the approach to the dam was even worse than the model as it led over the church steeple of the village of Langscheid on the crest overlooking the dam, before swooping down into the valley - with only seconds before the aircraft had to pull up to avoid the valley side at the other end of the dam, bomb aimer George Johnston had no time to correct the aircraft's height and heading

McCarthy made 9 attempts before Johnston was satisfied and released their "Upkeep" on the tenth run - it was just as well the Germans had considered the dam invulnerable to air attack and had placed no flak in the vicinity. The bomb exploded and turning back to assess the damage McCarthy saw a section of crest had been blown away, but to their intense disappointment the dam was still standing. The attack by Brown was equally unsuccessful and both aircraft returned to RAF Scampton - but it was only 20 minutes out from landing that McCarthy remembered to send the "Goner 79C" signal to indicate weapon release at the sorpe dam.

External links

*http://www.sorpesee.de de icon