The Dam Busters, 1955

An image from the famous take-off scene in The Dam Busters.
Three of the nine Lancaster bombers on their way to Germany's Ruhr Dams on 16 May 1943.

I jokingly referred to the 1955 movie, The Dam Busters, in a post about busting beaver dams near the Havelock yard. I hadn't watched it in decades, so I rented a copy and sat down one blustery afternoon last week and watched again. I wasn't disappointed.

I can't comment on its historical accuracy, but I will say it's a docudrama. I don't know how it would fare with today's audiences as its dialogue is sometimes politically incorrect, the special effects are crude by today's standards, and the pacing is slow compared to modern films.

A Lancaster bomber at the Canadian Aviation & Space Museum circa 2018
Of the 133 airmen on the dam busters raid, 30 were Canadians, half didn't return.

But, that said, the aircraft scenes, the portrayal of the mission, the acting, and the emotional and psychological veracity are compelling. Also, the portrayal of real-life engineering, its ups and downs, its bureaucratic frustrations, and its sometimes exhilarating successes feel real to me as a lapsed aeronautical engineer. I was glad to see the legendary engineer Barnes Wallis portrayed in the movie, and that his role wasn't minimized.

I'd rate it 8.5 to 9 out of 10. 

Paperback version published by Abacus, 2008.

I said I'd write more about books, so here's one with a little Dam Busters spin. 

I read this one by Harry Pearson, Achtung Schweinehund!: A Boy's Own Story of Imaginary Combat, over the winter. It's an account of Pearson's lifelong involvement in the hobby of war gaming, miniature figures, and military models. It's fact filled, fascinating, sympathetic, and endlessly humorous. He has this to say about the movie:

"The Dam Busters starred Richard Todd [JDL: he plays Wing Commander Guy Gibson], a mainstay of British war films. He had also been a mainstay of the British war. The Dublin-born actor had served in the 7th Battalion of the Parachute Regiment, taken part in the Normandy Landings and had been a member of the Allied spearhead that cut through German lines to join the airborne troops, commanded by Major Howard, who had captured the Pegasus Bridge. In the film D-Day the Sixth of June Todd played his own commanding officer, while in Darryl F. Zanuck's epic The Longest Day he played the part of Major Howard, with a younger actor taking the role of Richard Todd. In the 1958 film I Was Monty's Double, meanwhile, M. E. Clifton-James, who had indeed been Monty's double, took the parts of Monty and his double, thus playing himself being himself as well as playing the man he had been playing at being. The war had already gone postmodern. Little wonder that a primary school boy [JDL: the author] could get confused between fact and fiction."

The book is full of these sorts of gems. Get it, and watch the film.