In 1951, during the Korean War, US Navy pilots flew Skyraiders off the carrier USS Princeton and torpedoed the gates of the Hwachon Dam in Korea.
Chinese troops held the dam and could open its gates to flood the valley where American troops were. Bombs, including guided bombs, had failed to put the gates out of use, so on 1 May 1951 eight Skyraiders flew in low and slow and put their torpedoes into the reservoir. Six hit; one gate was demolished and a second put out of action, and the Chinese lost control of the river.
One detail that did not fit: Lt. (j.g.) James R. Sanderson, one of the pilots, described the approach as “like we were in slow motion.”
What is reconstructed: this is an animated reconstruction, not archive film. No film of the strike is used. The dam’s gates, hoist and winch, its slope and the valley below are our reconstruction from two wartime air photographs, and the hills behind it are barer and smoother than the real ones. The men on the dam, their clothing and their running off are imagined: no one on the dam was photographed. The aircraft is drawn slimmer than a real AD-4 Skyraider, the three night-attack AD-4Ns that flew are drawn as ordinary AD-4s, and the paint is shown clean where the 1951 photographs show it worn. The torpedo is a Mark 13 drawn as a straight tube, with a nose drum and tail box wider than the real ones, and the wood thrown off at the splash is a handful of flat slats. The under-water second is imagined: nobody filmed it, the dam’s lake face there is our invention, and a real torpedo’s track was fainter than the bright wake drawn here. The damage is imagined beyond the record of one gate demolished and a second put out of use: the open bay, the hole through the second gate, six bursts seen in one view and the lake sinking by several feet within seconds are ours. The lake is shown sinking within seconds to show that the stored water could no longer be held; in reality the level fell over hours and days, and how far it fell is not recorded. Where the guided bomb fell is not recorded, and the bomb bursting on a gate is our picture. The camp downriver, its bridge and the flood are imagined and shown in daylight; the river really rose on 8 April 1951, three weeks before the strike, and the engineers pulled their bridges back. The carrier’s captain, William Gallery, is seen only from behind with no likeness, and the hangar deck and torpedo rack are imagined. The real lake level that day is not recorded. Where sources differ: Wikipedia says seven torpedoes struck and six exploded, while the Navy sources say six hit.
Sources
– Naval History and Heritage Command, H-Gram 061, “The Last Aerial Torpedo Attack” (Rear Adm. Samuel J. Cox)
– Naval History and Heritage Command, H-061-1, “Korea: U.S. Navy Operations, March-July 1951”, section “Hwachon Dam Strike”
– U.S. Navy photograph 80-G-428678 and its caption (National Archives)
– National Naval Aviation Museum, “The U.S. Navy’s ‘Dambusters’ at Hwachon Dam” (2015)
– Robert F. Dorr, “Skyraiders Torpedo the Hwachon Dam”, Defense Media Network (2012)
Sanderson’s words rest on one source (the museum article); that the torpedoes ran under water rests on a second-hand quotation of Naval Aviation News (2001).
Credits
Ground and surface textures from Poly Haven (CC0, no credit required). Every model and figure was made for this video. Animated in Blender. Narration is a synthetic voice (Kokoro). Music and sound made for this video.
Corrections: tell us in the comments and we will fix it in the pinned comment.
#HwachonDam #KoreanWar #NavalHistory
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America always commits such crimes.
Should have called in the A10 Warthogs 😂
Lies
"The torpedoes ran underwater…"
As opposed to?
Because they were ordered to. That's why.
Why didnt the use the bouncing betties they use in ww2 at the german damns. Would have been more effective
Hahahha simply a war crime
Big deal, it didn't help us win that war. Your video is pointless. Just like all of the pointless trash our president is talking about Iran, it's not helping us win this war😮.
Ask the people in nepal
Didn't Americans lose badly in the Korean war?
War crimes as usual.
I wonder if we hit China 3 Gorges Dam the war will be over in Taiwan
😂😂😂see chinese lose also in Korean war they runaway😂😂
That’s war crime rigth,.?
I can't remember the name but they made a movie about this😮
"How do we stop them from flooding our troops downstream?"
"How about we just bomb the dam."
Sometimes, military intelligence is completely backwards.
That reminds me of WW2 The Dambusters!! Brilliant episode of US military engineering!!
Am I the only one that read this stuff back before the internet?
Surely this would flood the American positions downriver?
Only a few years prior the the second global disagreement and the brits had the Dambusters which were effective should have tried their tactics
so american’s flooded themselves?
By destroying the gates, it will flood the Americans. Insane.
Down with usa
VFA-195 DamBuster callsign chippy (but not to be mistaken as british avro lancaster squadron that also using the word DamBuster)
Wouldn’t bombing it cause all the water to flood everything including the soldiers? Seems like a stupid thing to do, but hey we’re still bombing schools with kids so you tell me
It's better to flood urself rather than enemy flooding u 🎉
If even the bomb is dropped the tow
Gates will break Americ river floods
This is how John and Bobbie Kennedy lost their older brother he was flying a newly made dam buster that rotated backward on a sub fame before it was dropped. The plane crashed and Kennedys bother died during what was a suicide mission that he volunteered for. RIP Joesph P. Kennedy AUGUST 12, 1944
Leaned from the Japanese? They used a similar method for Pearl
The American base is not flooded because the dam is closed, so Chinese open the dam gate to flood the American base. American leader bomb and torpedoed the dam to open it even more so the American base flushed down clean. What a lovely idea❤
Then, years later, President Jimmy Carter made deals with China and gave them the keys to Nukes. Guess who was in charge of the party?
violates international law
So they copied the Dam Busters from WWII big deal
Worked in ww2 should work in Korea
Why do Americans go to other countries far from them and wage wars? disgusting and terrorism.
So to prevent the chinese and north korea flooding us bases, they destroyed the dam holding the water?
China 🇨🇳 should place nets
Thank god America had such people who could think outside the box and invent a system of attack, never seen before !
Apart from the famous Dam Busters raid by the RAF in May 1943, that is, more than a decade earlier- and they even made a bloody film about it, showing how it was done.
America- reinventing everything, again.
U.S. pilots. America has many countries be specific
That's good that United States knocked out that bridge that's good we ought to knock out more of those enemies that we have
Should of called Dambusters
the english used skip bombs launched from landcasters. very much more powerful. the skipbombs were cylidrical as an oil barrel. they would skip along and slam detonate. and take out dams controlled by the nazi's. take out the whole city down river.
The Chinese did not erect anti-torpedo nets like the Germans did, so the U.S. Navy had no need to call Barnes Wallis to make more bouncing bombs
The American have used to destruct the common population and killed many people with flooding technique
Yeah but it's not as cool and skilled as bouncing a bomb across the surface to destroy a damn 💪