Before the Dambusters could fly, Barnes Wallis had to make his bomb work. David Irving follows the failed trials, the May 1943 raid and the floodwaters below, weighing its success against its human cost.
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Barnes Wallis had persuaded the authorities to back his bouncing bomb. Then the full-size prototypes broke apart. David Irving follows the engineer’s race to make the weapon work and the aircrews training to deliver it against Germany’s dams in May 1943.
The story moves between Wallis’s experiments, Guy Gibson’s No. 617 Squadron and the control room awaiting news of the attack. It follows the low-flying Lancasters to the Möhne and Eder dams, with close attention to the crews’ decisions and the escape of injured gunner Tony Burcher. On the ground, power-station workers and villagers see the flood approaching and try to warn their neighbours.
An afterword follows surviving airmen, the civilian and captive labourer deaths, and the German repair effort. Irving weighs the raid’s technical achievement and boost to British morale against its human cost and questions its lasting effect on German industry. His account draws on Wallis’s papers, interviews, operational records and intercepted German police messages.
Hardcover edition of The Night the Dams Burst.
Author profile
David Irving is a renowned British historian and author of over 30 books. Known for his meticulous primary source research, he has spent decades in archives across the globe, unearthing diaries, documents, and first-hand accounts that have reshaped our understanding of the Second World War and its key figures.
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