The Dambusters

No. 617 Squadron – forever known as “The Dambusters” – was formed in 1943 for a single, highly specialised mission: Operation Chastise, the famous low-level attack using Barnes Wallis’s “bouncing bomb” against key dams in Germany (May 1943). After the dams raid, the squadron continued as a precision “special duties” unit, taking on heavily defended, high-value targets.

Woodhall Spa’s link to the Dambusters is both operational and personal. The village’s Petwood Hotel became closely associated with RAF crews and is widely remembered as the squadron’s “home-from-home” as an officers’ mess during the war years, with memorabilia still celebrated today.

Crucially, the RAF station at Woodhall Spa (near Tattershall Thorpe/Coningsby) later became the squadron’s wartime base. The RAF’s own squadron history records that by 1944, 617 Squadron was operating from RAF Woodhall Spa, flying major operations with Tallboy and later Grand Slam “earthquake” bombs, supporting missions around D-Day (including radar-deception work) and contributing to heavy strikes such as those against Tirpitz.

The village’s most visible tribute is the Dambusters Memorial in Royal Square, erected in 1987. It stands on the site of the former Royal Hydro Hotel and Winter Gardens, which were destroyed in a 1943 bombing raid, and the memorial’s design intentionally evokes a dam and a breach of floodwater.