Bouncing Bomb lathe - 70 years on

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the "Dam Busters" raids on german dams during the war.

We have had somewhat of a media frenzy here at the factory for the last few days with reporters wielding cameras, video cameras and microphones all over the place. The reason for all this activity is that today is the 70th anniversary of one of the RAF's most daring missions - The famous Dam Busters raid carried out by 617 squadron based at Scampton in Lincoln.

The reason for the interest with Sound Leisure is that 3 years ago we acquired a local business, Dawsons pattern works, founded in 1915 by Thomas Dawson and subsequently owned and run by several generations of the Dawson Family. In 2010 after 95 years of family ownership, John Dawson retired and with no other family member remaining to take the reigns of the company we brought it under the Sound Leisure umbrella with the intention of continuing the name, skills and heritage that Dawsons had built up over the years.Since becoming part of our family the Dawson division has become an integral part of our businesses and we supply many bespoke patterns, tooling and furniture to a wide range of customers over a wide sector.

One of the items of machinery that we purchased with the acquisition, and that is causing the press interest is a lathe that was manufactured approximately 100 years ago and was installed by the M.O.D in the Dawsons factory in Leeds to aid the development of a top secret prototype. This project later turned out to be the bouncing bomb that was later used on the mission to destroy the Mohne, Sorp and Eder dams and has since been credited with drastically reducing the length of the war effort.

Barnes Wallis, the engineer that designed the bomb received a Knighthood in 1968, which in part was attributed to this development. Described by his family as "a man of peace rather than a man of war", we are sure that Barnes would be happy to see the lathe being used for much happier and friendlier manufacturing purposes than it was used for in the past.

Thanks to my boss Chris for posing with the Lathe and writing this little piece of historial "factitude" for our website.