Did the dambuster have a long lasting impacting?

by George_PrinceOfGames

Did the dambuster event or the bouncing bomb have a long lasting impact that is you can still see today did it have impact on how bombs or made and so on? I am planning to do this for coursework but i need to know if it had a last longing impact. thank you

Aurevir

No, it did not. The "Upkeep" bouncing bomb was designed for an extremely specific purpose- attacking dams that were protected by torpedo nets. At this time, high-altitude conventional bombing with standard 500 pound bombs did not have satisfactory accuracy or penetration capability to destroy a target of that nature, so the bouncing bombs used a different tactic, namely extremely low altitude bombing runs delivering a munition that exploded against the base of the dam.

This usage was already partly superseded before the end of the war, by the development of 'earthquake bombs', coincidentally by the same designer of the bouncing bombs. These were extremely large bombs designed to fall at supersonic speeds and penetrate through rock or concrete before detonating. There was still the accuracy issue, but that was solved by the development of guided munitions, which are essentially normal bombs with a guidance package attached. They are guided in a number of ways - radio control by a human operator, laser targeting, GPS guidance - and have far superior accuracy to 'dumb' bombs, enabling aircraft to attack targets from high altitudes with great accuracy. These two developments have removed the highly specific niche that bouncing bombs fell into, especially as the delivery method for them was so costly (more than 40% of the planes on the dam buster mission did not return).