Reel history
The Dam Busters: hits its targets – and doesn't dumb down
Michael Anderson's 1955 dramatisation of the 1943 RAF mission to bomb German dams is fairly true to life and bounces along entertainingly
Alex von Tunzelmann
Fri 7 Aug 2015 10.52 EDT Last modified on Thu 22 Feb 2018 16.14 EST
Deadly accuracy … Richard Todd in the Dam Busters. Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex
The Dam Busters (1955)
Entertainment grade: A–
History grade: B+
On the night of 16-17 May 1943, 617 Squadron of the Royal Air Force – later nicknamed the Dam Busters – carried out Operation Chastise to attack German dams in the Ruhr valley. The last surviving pilot, New Zealander Les Munro – who is name-checked twice in the film – died this week at the age of 96. Just two of the original 133 Dam Busters are still alive (George "Johnny" Johnson, from the UK, who was a bomb-aimer and Canadian front-gunner Fred Sutherland); 53 were killed during the operation. Three men who baled out of planes that were shot down were taken prisoner by the Germans
All tech ... The Dam Busters Photograph: Moviestore/REX Shutterstock
The film begins with aviation engineer Barnes Wallis (Michael Redgrave) developing a bouncing bomb. "He spends hours and hours shooting golf balls up and down," complains the supervisor of an experimental ship tank in Teddington, "and every now and then he breaks a window." It would be a struggle for screenwriters to get anything like the amount of exposition in this script past a studio executive today, yet the clear explanations of technical, military and engineering details are one of the reasons second world war enthusiasts love this movie. There are a few minor inaccuracies, but they're not bloopers. Parts of Upkeep, as Wallis's project was codenamed, were classified until 1963. This is why the bouncing bombs – which in real life were cylindrical – are spherical in the film.
Faced with (largely fictional) obstructions from government bureaucracy and from his employer, Vickers, Wallis goes to Arthur "Bomber" Harris (Basil Sydney), head of Bomber Command. Harris remains a controversial figure today, particularly for his involvement in – and justification of – the bombing of Dresden. That's a separate issue from the story here. Still, it's worth noting that, in real life, Harris was sceptical about Operation Chastise from the beginning. Rather than being supportive, as he is in the film, he called Wallis's plan "tripe beyond the wildest description".
Dam man ... Richard Todd in The Dam Busters Photograph: Allstar/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar
A squadron is formed under wing commander Guy Gibson (Richard Todd) and his unfortunately named black labrador. There has been talk of Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson remaking The Dam Busters, though the project seems to have stalled for now. The new film-makers apparently considered renaming the dog something less offensive, such as Trigger or Digger, or referring to it as Nigsy – a diminutive that Gibson himself sometimes used. Certainly the name in this film is historically accurate, and it is also true that the dog's name was used as a code word during Operation Chastise – which means a morse code operator has to shout it with great gusto at a key moment in the movie.
It has been suggested that the N-word was less incendiary in Britain during the second world war than it was in the United States, where abolitionists objected strongly to it from the early 19th century. It would be a mistake to imagine it was inoffensive, though. Like other racial epithets, the N-word was always used in the context of belittlement and frequently as abuse. Yet there was far less awareness in Britain during the 1940s and 50s of the harm caused by using such language – and so, in real life and in the movie, Gibson's dog's name could go unremarked upon.
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The technical achievement of staging both the test flights and the bombing raid itself for the film was impressive. The film-makers had four Lancaster bombers rather than the full complement of 19. They were borrowed from the RAF, which also lent pilots to perform the terrific stunt flying. The film has fun with dramatic licence: a night watching showgirls dance in spotlights at a London theatre gives Gibson the idea for the Dam Busters' spotlamp altimeter. In real life, this was designed by Ben Lockspeiser of the ministry of aircraft production – who went on to be the first president of the council of Cern.
Flying high ... The Dam Busters Photograph: Moviestore/REX Shutterstock
The raids on the Möhne and Eder dams as shown in the film were successful; the Sorpe dam was not breached, and its bombing does not make it to the screen. Undoubtedly, The Dam Busters is right in suggesting that Operation Chastise greatly boosted British morale – and it was an extraordinary and courageous achievement for all the men involved. Yet the hopes of Wallis and others that bombing the dams might seriously damage the German war effort – or even shorten the conflict – were not really borne out. There is evidence Chastise put a dent in German coal production, but little more than that. Of the 1,650 or so people killed by the flooding, more than 1,000 turned out to be forced labour camp inmates and prisoners of war – mostly Ukrainian, Dutch, French and Belgian. Bomber Harris himself was disappointed in the results of the operation: "It achieved nothing compared with the effort and the loss," he wrote in 1945.
The Dam Busters is very much a piece of its time, but it remains a splendidly made war movie and – if you don't mind a few touches of embellishment – a respectably accurate retelling of Operation Chastise.