‘Up the marbles!’: How Barnes Wallis’s daughter congratulated Dambusters inventor after bouncing bomb he dreamed up by playing with children’s toy at family home smashed the heart of Hitler’s war machine in 1943
- Barnes Wallis perfected weapon’s design with marbles in back garden
- His daughter wrote to him three days after mission success to congratulate him
- Mary’s letter, which is up for sale, details the extensive testing Wallis carried out
- Bouncing bomb played critical part in successful 1943 Dambusters mission
The inventor of the bouncing bomb which destroyed German dams during a pivotal point in the Second World War used marbles to come up with the design, it has been revealed.
Engineer Barnes Wallis, the man behind the infamous bouncing bomb, is pictured playing with marbles in his family garden as he perfected the weapon’s design.
Details of his extensive efforts to do have been revealed in a letter from his daughter who wrote to congratulate him on success just three days after the now-famous Dambusters mission.
Pictured: Barnes Wallis and his family practise shooting marbles into a bath tub at their home in Effingham as Wallis perfects the design for the weapon used in the Dam Busters mission
Barnes Wallis, pictured in 1924, was a scientist and inventor who designed the bouncing bomb
Dubbed Operation Chastise, the mission saw an attack on German dams carried out on 16–17 May 1943 by an RAF Squadron now known as the Dambusters.
The bombs were successful at breaching two dams and causing catastrophic flooding in the Ruhr and Eder valleys, leaving factories and mines damaged and industrial production hampered.
The excited note from ‘Wiggy’ to her daddy engineer Barnes Wallis has shed more light on how he came up with the ‘Bouncing Bomb’.
He first proposed the famous weapon in a paper published in 1942 before it was deployed a year later
Wiggy – Mary Wallis, then 16 – penned the congratulatory note to her father just three days after the second night of bombing in 1943.
It lists a number of experiments the family carried out – including the ‘impossible task of trying to see whether a minute marble bounced under or over a wobbley piece of string’.
Signed ‘Wiggy’, a family nickname, and dated May 20, it begins: ‘Hooray, hooray, hooray!!! Wonderful marbles. Up the marbles. Cheers cheers cheers!’
The message also reveals that Mary celebrated hearing that her father’s extensive efforts ‘were not in vain’ – but couldn’t reveal why to unsuspecting staff.
Pictured: A bouncing bomb slung in position beneath a Lancaster Bomber flown during the Dambusters raid in 1943. The Lancaster Bomber was ideal for an attack on the dams because of its huge bomb bay, great loading capacity and because it was highly manoeuvrable
This letter to the inventor of the bouncing bomb Barnes Wallis from his daughter Mary ‘Wiggy’ Wallis which celebrates its success and recalls how they practiced it with marbles is up for sale
The idea behind the bouncing bomb was a weapon that could skip over the surface of water and avoid torpedo nets before sinking next to its target.
The explosion would then act like a depth charge – concentrating the force of the surrounding water.
The note, written neatly in blue ink, is being sold along with a modern photo print of Wallis with his children taken while they were doing the garden trials.
The lot is expected to fetch between £1,000 and £1,500 when offered for sale later this month (19/11) at Dominic Winter Auctioneers.
Barnes, hailed as a war hero for his efforts towards the bouncing bomb, died in 1979. Mary passed away in 2019.
The letter says: ‘As a matter of fact as soon as I read in the paper about the bombing of the dams in Germany I guessed that the kitchen bath tub and that wonderful erection of the garden table and kitchen chairs, and the complicated string-moving-up-and-down business, and the cold, cold water spilt in vain efforts to fill the tub, and the wild shrieks from Lis when the marbles lost themselves in the onion bed, and the impossible task of trying to see whether a minute marble bounced under or over a wobbley piece of string, were not in vain.’