Today, Eyebrook Reservoir is a peaceful part of the landscape on the Rutland and Northamptonshire border.

Surrounded by farmland, woodland and open countryside, there is little to suggest the extraordinary role it played in one of the most famous RAF operations of the Second World War.

But in the spring of 1943, the skies above Eyebrook would have looked and sounded very different.

Preparing for an extraordinary mission
In March 1943, a new Royal Air Force squadron was formed for a highly secret operation. No. 617 Squadron, based at RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire and led by Wing Commander Guy Gibson, was given the task of attacking a number of major dams in Germany.

The mission presented an enormous technical challenge.

The weapon designed by Barnes Wallis, officially known as Upkeep but forever associated with the name ‘bouncing bomb’, had to be released with extraordinary precision. The Lancaster bombers needed to approach their targets at very low altitude, at night, and release the weapon at exactly the right height, speed and distance from the dam.

That demanded intensive training.

By late April 1943, Eyebrook had become one of the key training grounds for the squadron. The crews practised flying their Lancasters just 60 feet above the water, while screens erected at the reservoir helped replicate the towers of the Möhne Dam.

The training must have been an extraordinary sight. Contemporary recollections describe Lancasters flying low over Eyebrook at dusk, sweeping along the reservoir just above the water before climbing away over the dam.

Eyebrook Reservoir was one of several places where the crews of 617 Squadron practised the demanding low-level flying they would need for the operation.

It is an extraordinary thought today: Lancaster bombers sweeping low across this quiet stretch of countryside as young airmen prepared for a mission unlike anything attempted before.

The Dambusters Raid
On the evening of 16 May 1943, 19 Lancaster bombers took off from RAF Scampton as part of Operation Chastise.

Their principal targets were the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe dams, important to Germany’s industrial Ruhr region.

The Möhne and Eder dams were breached. The raid subsequently became one of the best-known RAF operations of the war and 617 Squadron became known as the ‘Dambusters’.

But its human cost was immense.

Eight of the 19 Lancasters did not return and 53 members of the aircrew were killed. Three were taken prisoner. The breaching of the dams also caused extensive flooding in Germany and resulted in the deaths of civilians and forced labourers on the ground.

Remembering Eyebrook’s part in the story
More than 80 years later, the Lancasters are gone and Eyebrook has returned to tranquillity.
A memorial at the reservoir commemorates the crews of 617 Squadron and records that the water was used for low-level practice before the raid on the Möhne and Eder dams on 16–17 May 1943.

Standing there today, looking across the water, makes that history feel remarkably close.

For us at Great Oakley, it is another reminder that the countryside around us is not simply a beautiful landscape. It is a landscape layered with stories, and sometimes an apparently quiet corner of it has played a part in events known around the world.

And Eyebrook has quite a story to tell.