Les briseurs de barrages

I personally went to school in the town where the Raids were monitored from (Grantham) by Wallis and Harris. There is hardly any memorabilia recording this local fact, and no-one would ever know. I know of RAF Scampton too, which I believe has closed down some years ago. For Lincolnshire, the Dams Raid is remembered poignantly, as the 617 Squadron, who now fly Tornados

in Scotland, was formed and trained there. They practised on the Derwent Reservoir near Sheffield, and the Eyebrook Reservoir in Leicestershire.

Sir Barnes Wallis thought in innovative ways, and the fact that this 'far out' idea of bouncing bombs on a lake, actually breached two dams is an engineering marvel. To do so under heavy flak is beating the odds. Wallis and 617 Squadron collaborated again with the Tallboy and Grand Slam 'earthquake' bombs, which destroyed many important railway viaducts and tunnels, as well as sinking the Tirpitz.

Richard Todd, after the film, moved 3 miles from Grantham. Maybe the film was the reason for this.

The film is one of few about RAF Bomber Command, and is a good portrayal of the danger involved. 41% of crew were killed (55,000). After early 1944, the loss rate rapidly decreased, as the Luftwaffe had been destroyed, so from 1940-3 I would guess 60-70% of crew were killed, for the whole campaign. It may be higher. The RAF didn't even know the Germans had excellent radar until early 1942. The film is about team work and working under stress - your immediate future depended on 6 other people. Many things could go wrong along the way. It is also about strong resilience to new ideas. i.e. The RAF could have had jet planes before 1939 if they'd have developed Whittle's ideas in the 1930s, instead of foolishly waiting 10 whole years until 1941. Whittle was then humiliated after the war by forcing him to give all his designs to the Americans, who didn't waste any time in treating the idea as their own.

When I first saw the film, I thought the special effects were weak and I was astonished a bomb bounced in the first place. When older and seeing it again, you can empathise more with the RAF crews and the skill and daring they would need. It focuses on one story line, and does not have American accents mysteriously appearing from nowhere. I think at the time Guy Gibson was about 25. Imagine yourself having that responsibility at 25.

Many of the 'Upkeep' mines that were bounced, completely missed the targets. Certainly for the Eder dam, there was just one mine left, and was dropped in the right place and destroyed the dam in 'one go'. The film gives the impression many were exploded to breach the dam, but actually a single one did the 'job'.

The Germans are never shown, and I would love to have known what they thought seeing this strange sight of bombs skimming the water's surface. I think Spielberg would have enjoyed making this film, but half of it would have been about the Germans. If the dams had been breached six months earlier, when a water pumping system had not been installed, the Germans would have been seriously up the creek with no paddles. The Ruhr Industry would have been unable to function at all. Do not underestimate what hypothetical difference the dams breach could have made to the Germans in their biggest industrial area.

Do women enjoy the film too, or is all the technical wizardry just for the male audience?

Why did Pink Floyd use it in their film 'The Wall'? Carling Black Label used the lake scenes many times in notorious adverts.

Many comments have been made about the brilliantly understated performances of Richard Todd (Guy Gibson, the RAF bombing expert who leads the raid) and Michael Redgrave (Barnes Wallis, the inventor whose vision propels the project and makes Gibson his disciple in it).

But one major theme is that of fighting a bureaucracy to fulfil a vision of how to do its work better than the ways it demands everybody use. This goes beyond a single wartime incident to give an inspiring portrait of individual talent and vision.

British wartime films are associated with "everyone pulling together in our darkest hour", but here we see those in authority as the villains (note that the Germans don't appear).

Consider the "last supper" scene before the raid. The airmen are sitting eating bacon and eggs, the last meal before bomber crews went out on a raid, many of them to die. The squadron paymaster strides up to the counter:

-bacon and eggs, please.

Woman behind counter, with strained respectfulness: are you flying tonight, sir?

• don't be stupid, woman. You know I'm the man who pays you every Thursday.

• your toast is on the table, sir.

The dinner lady understands the unwritten rule that the only men who get the traditional full English breakfast are those who might be dead a few hours later, and she rightly puts petty administrators in a completely different category, even if she has to call them 'sir'.

On the way to his plane, a pilot checks his mailbox. "Mess bill", he comments. "I can leave that till tomorrow". I think he's one of the ones who doesn't come back. A well placed line.

After the raid, Wallis meets Gibson coming off his plane, and asks him how it went. As he reels off the list of crews lost, he sees the astonishment creeping over Wallis, who suddenly realises that his obsession's fulfilment has cost the lives of so many of the young men he has been working with. Gibson's job is to deal death and receive it, and he must sooth the academic who suddenly realises what war involves:

• Wallis, you've been worrying more than any of us. Why don't you go to the doc and get some of his sleeping tablets?

• but .. what about you, Gibbo? Hadn't you better get some sleep as well?

[silence]

• Not now .. I've got some letters to write.

And as the credits roll, we see them walking away separately, Gibson to write letters to the families of 56 of his fellow airmen now presumed dead.

I don't want to neglect mentioning those who died horribly under the bombs, whose deaths are covered by triumphal scenes of the flooding after the raid. But the film itself deals with the effects war brings on a tightly-observed and well-played group of individuals, and shows these more cleverly than its modest reputation deserves.

*NB I can't vouchsafe the dialogue I've quoted, but it's pretty much what they say.

A very well made film, with a good script, actors and supporting cast. The film recreates the technical problems of the bombs development and squadron training. However, being made so soon after the raid the film ignores the relative lack of impact of the raid on German war production. However, the bravery of the air crews is very well portrayed. Guy Gibson, who was killed later in the war, won a Victoria Cross for his part in the raid and his leadership.

Just like to respond to Howard Morley's comments. The dam's raids were urgently needed, and it took only a few months to form 617, train them and attack the dams. Quite a feat I'm sure you'll agree. The film nicely conveys the struggles and the friendships of the crews, put together from the best of the Commonwealth fliers. Even if the screenplay does take some rather large liberties with the story.

As to Guy, he was killed in 1944 on his way back from acting as Master Bomber on a raid over Germany. His Mosquito crashed in Holland, killing him and his navigator. To this day there are no explanations for the crash. Guy should not have been flying at all, but he was so desperate to get back in the air that Bomber Harris gave in and let him. A tragedy. Of the crew of G-George (Guy's ship on the raid) none of them survived the war. The crew crashed whilst trying to bomb the Dortmund-Ems canal later in 1943.

The film is a fitting tribute to the raid, and the massive losses of 617. Of the 19 ships to go out, 11 came back. Of the 77 crew lost on the raid, only 1 survived. This is why the dams were not bombed again. And the problem with the Sorpe was that it was an earth damn, the bombs were not very effective as with the Eder and Moehne.

How do I know all this? My Great-grandmother was a Gibson.

Watch the film and marvel.

Now that everyone has taken their shots at this magnificent movie, just a couple of comments about it to help put it into context. A) No we didn't see Russian prisoners of war trying to flee for their lives and drowning. We didn't in fact see anybody drowning. But this is war and people die in wars, it's the nature of the beast. B) Seen in its current setting, especially in North America, the use of the name Nigger for the Black Labrador may seem upsetting and racist, explaining why that section of the movie is left out sometimes. But back in Britain in those days, it would not have been regarded as so nasty and derogatory as it now seems here. It was actually a fair common name for Black Labs at the time - though not any more of course. C) Nope, the movie isn't entirely accurate in all aspects - many years after I first saw it back in the UK, a bomber pilot from those days told me that they used not a Lancaster but I think a Halifax to plough into the ground. D) Maybe it did glorify Guy Gibson, but he earned that Victoria Cross, if I recall, for all his diversionary flights to draw off the flak from the other aircraft, who must have felt like sitting ducks the way they had to drop every bomb at precisely the same spot and height, very low over the water. If the movie gives him credit for thinking up the overlapping spotlights, we can take that as artistic licence. Finally, anything which slowed down the German war machine was crucial to Britain. This movie did its best with hardly-developed special effects and produced an exciting and fine picture, made still during the days of rationing in England. I know because I was there at the time. I was just six when this movie was made in 1954 but it's still a real favorite of mine, not least because we were living on the shores of Lake Windermere, England's largest lake, in the English Lake District at the time, and they flew right in over our house for about six weeks that summer to film some parts of it. Remember the scene where after one of the practice runs, they were picking bits of tree out of the undercarriage of one of the aircraft? My father always used to remind that they clipped one of our trees in the filming one day and he used to claim that those bits of branch and foliage actually came from our tree. I guess they probably didn't really and they faked it a bit for the movie, adding that bit of dialogue into the script after the incident because it showed how low they flew. Quite why they showed it in the landing gear I'm not sure, because of course they wouldn't have been flying with their landing gear down, but it is effective in showing how low they flew both in the raid and in the filming. I've always loved this movie though - it's a beaut, as they say - not least because I grew up with Black Labradors. I wept like a baby when Nigger died. Have just watched it for about the zillionth time - have literally lost count. It's still a fine and fitting tribute to the men who gave their lives in the raid all those years ago.