Just Finished Reading: Dam Busters – The Race to Smash the Dams 1943 by James Holland (FP 2012)

Europe – 1943. At last the war was beginning to turn in the Allies favour. In North Africa the dreaded Afrika Corps was about to have its final battle whilst in the Mediterranean the Royal Navy was getting the upper hand. Everything was starting to fall into place for an invasion of mainland Europe through the Italian peninsula. Meanwhile the efforts of RAF Bomber Command where finally bearing fruit. Despite the nightly losses over Occupied Europe an ever greater tonnage of bombs was falling on Germany inflicting ever greater damage to her towns, cities and the industry they contained. It was only a matter of time before her entire war economy collapsed. The losses on both sides where terrible but there seemed no alternative. One man, however, had a different idea. Engineering genius Barnes Wallis thought that there must be a better way, a more targeted way, to win or at least shorten the war – by hitting high value targets with undreamt of accuracy. Taking out these targets with comparatively small numbers of aircraft would, he believed, have an effect out of all proportion to the numbers involved. After many meetings and much persuasion an initially reluctant War Department gave him the green light for his most ambitious idea to be made reality – an attack on the German dams which provided much of the power and water for its industry in the heart of the Ruhr Valley. When the realisation had sunk in that Wallis had got his way he couldn’t help but pause. He had just agreed to provide a working and potentially war winning weapon, with its delivery system and a trained cadre of men to deliver it, in just 10 short weeks. If that wasn’t ambitious enough both the weapon and the planes that were needed to carry it only existed in Wallis’s head and most of the designs had not even been put on paper. The race was very much on!

Told in breathless fashion this 530 page book was a breeze to read. Easily turning 100+ pages a day I can pretty much say that I enjoyed every one of them. I’ve worked on projects with pretty tight deadlines but this story was just amazing. To design a prototype, test it on models, then in real life (on small dams in various parts of the country), train aircrews used to bombing from miles up to accurately fly, navigate and attack targets at under 100 feet off the ground at speeds in excess of 250 miles per hour all in complete secrecy and then fly the mission in the dead of night over occupied territory – and succeed – in TEN weeks is staggering. Even knowing it happened, even (now) knowing the details and work involved I can still barely believe that they did it. It is a feat almost beyond comprehension and is rightly celebrated as one of the greatest single attacks every made by a RAF unit. It still raises the hair on my neck to think of it. James Holland has produced a book worthy of the many men (and a few women) involved in the attack and everything that proceeded it. As an added bit of interest I discovered whilst reading the book that someone I used to work with – in a roundabout fashion – is the daughter of one of the surviving aircrew. Whilst not exactly a personal claim to fame it did feel like it made the whole story a little bit more personal especially every time it mentioned his name I couldn’t help thinking ‘I know his daughter’. If you have any interests in the RAF, the bomber campaign in Europe or just a brilliantly told tale of Herculean efforts in wartime this is definitely the book for you! Highly recommended.