Wallis, Sir Barnes Neville

Wallis, Sir Barnes Neville (1887-1979), British aviation engineer, whose most famous designs and inventions include the R100 airship, the Wellington bomber, and the “bouncing bomb”.

Born on September 26, 1887, in Ripley, Derbyshire, Wallis left school aged 16 to start an apprenticeship as a marine engineer. In 1913 he joined the engineering company Vickers as a designer in the airship department, where he was responsible for the design of the R100 in the 1920s. In the 1930s he invented the “geodetic” form of aircraft construction, which he employed in the design of the Wellesley, an aircraft that gained the world's non-stop distance record. He next used it in his design of the Wellington, one of the most famous bombers of all time and backbone of RAF Bomber Command throughout much of World War II.

Wallis's design skills were exploited to the full by the RAF during World War II in the creation of the blockbuster bombs, the 5-tonne Tallboy and the 10-tonne Grand Slam. Their spin-stabilized design gave them enough penetrative capacity to break through reinforced concrete several metres thick before exploding, enabling them to destroy U-boat pens. They were also used to destroy the battleship Tirpitz (a major menace to allied shipping) in the Norwegian fjord where it sheltered.

Wallis is, however, best remembered in popular history for his development of the “bouncing bomb”. These were intended to disrupt German production by destroying key dams in the Ruhr, Germany's main industrial area. The bomb was designed to skip along the water surface to reach its target, the dam wall, much as in the children's game of skimming stones. Of the three primary targets selected for the raids in 1943—the Möhne, Eder, and Sorpe dams—only the latter escaped destruction. The operation is depicted in the successful 1954 film The Dam Busters.

After the war Wallis continued his career in aviation design with the British Aircraft Corporation until 1971, with particular contributions to the development of “swing-wing”, or variable-geometry, aircraft. Some of these ideas are used in a United States plane, the General Dynamics F-111.

Wallis was honoured with a CBE in 1943 and a knighthood in 1968. He died on October 30, 1979.