After Me, The Flood

After Me, The Flood is open at the International Bomber Command Centre in Lincoln from 6 October 2026 to 28 February 2027. It's the IBCC's own account of the Dambusters raid, Operation Chastise, told through the eyes of the people who lived it rather than just the military history of the flight.

On the night of 16-17 May 1943, 617 Squadron's Lancaster bombers attacked three dams. The Möhne Dam was breached, and the resulting floods killed close to 1,300 people. The raid cost eight aircraft and 53 of the 133 aircrew, with three more captured. The exhibition brings together hundreds of photographs, films and documents from town archives, private collections and local historians across the Möhne region, much of it shown publicly for the first time. That includes black and white footage of the aftermath and the forced-labour reconstruction that followed.

Running alongside that is the story of Flight Commander Melvin 'Dinghy' Young, whose crew were killed returning from the Eder Dam, and letters by the bouncing bomb's inventor, Barnes Wallis. The whole thing was curated with German archivist Lena Lewald and grew out of the friendship between Scampton and the German community of Möhnesee. It's a look at the raid from both sides of the water, the aircrews and the people on the ground.

It runs at the International Bomber Command Centre from 6 October 2026 through to 28 February 2027, and it'll tour Germany after it closes here in Lincoln.