The Dambusters Raid

Ref: 4084

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{detailed description}The mission flown on 16th May 1943 has become one of the few to be known worldwide and remains in the public imagination fifty years on. Operation Chastise was a daring plan to destroy key dams in western Germany and required the development of a unique weapon to breach the unusual targets. The resulting success created a legend, fuelled by wartime propaganda and willingly sustained by a public keen to find heroes.
Understanding of the event, its origins and its real effects was coloured by the pressures on those offering early accounts: genuine assessment and evaluation is only now possible with the benefit of declassified official reports. Contrary to the accepted story it is clear that the Air Staff recognised the value of attacking the dams and had been preparing schemes to do so since 1937, and Barnes Wallis relied considerably on the research of official groups to perfect the revolving depth charge; without his determination and intuition however the project would have remained on paper. The raid itself is similarly reassessed to reveal complications on the outward flight, uncharted flak, misidentification and mechanical and human error to make the mission significantly different to that planned, and to that commonly accepted.
Using freshly released sources, navigational logs and extensive contact with many of the leading characters in the planning and execution of the raid John Sweetman dissects the truth behind the legend, allowing the reader to reach his own decisions.
{Author / Publisher / Date}by John Sweetman
published by Arms and Armour Press 1993 revised edn. (Originally published as “Operation Chastise, The Dams Raid: Epic or Myth” Janes 1982) 219pp illus. ind. app. bib. 16x24 paperback
{condition}slightly yellowed otherwise mint
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