It was a raid sent to destroy a series of mighty dams, wreaking havoc with the Ruhr's vital water supplies.
Goggleless, I "da-dah-dahed" Coates's melody a fortnight ago while driving alongside the long and shining level of the Möhnesee reservoir that culminates in the mighty Möhne dam in Germany's Ruhr Valley.
In the early hours of 17 May 1943, as news came through that the mighty Mohne dam - the first to be attacked with Upkeep - had been breached, the fiery head of RAF Bomber Command, Sir Arthur Harris, turned to Wallis and said : "I didn't believe a word you said when you came to see me.
Now with a proposal for a series of dams that will produce more electricity than even the mighty Three Gorges Dam but would also threaten a region considered an ecological treasure, the Chinese government is faced with a dilemma of whether it will abide by its own laws.
Designed to control the flooding of the mighty river, the dam produces vast amounts of electricity - the equivalent of 11 nuclear power stations.
Whereas other countries that share the mighty waterway favour dams and power plants, the Cambodians are turning the Mekong into a commercial highway.
Since the end of imperial rule, Chinese leaders have shared a colossal engineering ambition: to dam the mighty Yangtze River.
International projects to eradicate the crop will rely on damming the mighty Kabul and Konar rivers for irrigation and electricity.
But this extraordinary annual cycle which has fed Cambodia's 23 million people for centuries is fracturing as first China, and now neighbouring Laos and Thailand, prepare to build a series of great dams across the mighty Mekong and its tributaries to provide electricity for the region's burgeoning cities. Eleven dams are planned to span the main river and nearly 100 more on its tributaries.
It would be intolerable if his V.P. kept trying to manipulate the locks and dams to send the mighty stream of power flowing her way.
FROM the damming and diverting of mighty rivers to the building of huge new cities from the ground up, China's government does not shy away from grand schemes.
