Operation Chastise: The RAF's Most Brilliant Attack of World War II

I received the book with dust cover. On the dust cover is a blurred overprinted photograph of the success of the raid at the Möhne dam. I turned to the 3 photographic sections included in the book but found no pictures of the results of the damage to either the Möhne or the Eder dams. For these pictures you have to go on your computer to Wikipedia. A gross omission from this book.

A major part of the book is about "Bomber" Harris and his views on defeating Nazi Germany by population center annihilation.

There are many books on this subject, several prominently referred to by the author. Certainly, you can do better in finding a better told story of this interesting bombing project.

What a great book. If you love history and a detailed background of the major participants, this book will exceed your expectations. For those who don't just want the overview of a time period in history, get this book to fill in a gap that is rarely talked about unless you're a British Historian of WWII. To get you in the mood, watch the old movie, Dam Busters.

This author has the ability to take a story where you know the ending and make it thrilling. He also does a yeoman's job of explaining the engineering challenges.

“Operation Chastise” tells the remarkable story of the “dam busters” of World War II. This was the bold plan to develop special bombs that could be used to destroy critical German dams and thus hamper the German war effort.

During the Second World War, bombing accuracy was extremely primitive as compared to the weapons of today. In most cases, bombs would simply miss their targets. Accuracy involved a significant degree of luck. Thus, to bomb dams, especially from high altitude, was unlikely to succeed.

It was an extraordinary engineer by the name of Barnes Wallis who developed a way of accurately targeting dams. He developed a bouncing bomb which, when dropped at very low altitude (less than 100 feet) would bounce along the surface water before sinking and exploding. On the night of 17-18 May 1943, Wallis’s plan was put in to action. There were no guarantees of success. Indeed, not all planes returned from the mission. However, enough planes got through and the bombs worked. Two dams were substantially damaged.

Was the plan ethical? In today’s world, it would be regarded as a war crime. In 1943, fewer qualms were held. It was a time of total war.

Max Hastings telling of the story of the dam busters makes for fascinating reading. He lifts the lid on one of the lesser understood battles of the war. Recommended for any reader with an interest in the history of the Second World War.

Every detail you wanted to know, or not know about this WW II story.

Max Hastings is one of six British historians of World War II who, in my opinion, are among the very best, combining engaging writing with thorough research and insightful analysis. Three of these, Hastings along with Antony Beevor and Ian Kershaw, were all born shortly after the war ended. Three were born shortly before the war — Alistair Horne, Martin Middlebrook, and John Keegan, of whom only Middlebrook is still with us.

Hastings’ book, Operation Chastise, which is by my count the twelfth book he’s written on World War II, lives up to this and his own high standard. It is the story of a daring and innovative 1943 raid on some of Germany’s largest dams in the industrial valleys of the Ruhr. It’s known popularly as the Dambusters Raid.

The large dams that were the target of the raid were impervious to conventional bombs. One of the heroes of the book is Barnes Wallis, who conceived of the idea of a bomb that would be released some 450 yards from the dam wall. Properly spinning, it would bounce along the surface of the water (avoiding protective underwater protective nets fitted by the German defenders), hit the dam wall itself, sink, and then use the additional explosive power transmitted by the water itself to breach the dam.

Everything had to be right: the extremely low altitude and speed of the aircraft, the backwards spinning of the huge bomb tucked under the aircraft belly, the alignment of the aircraft on its approach, and the exact point of release. The Lancaster bomber was heavy and not easily controlled. And no one had ever tried to master this combination of bombing requirements.

Hastings steps back from the operation to help us understand how improbable was the development of such an untried weapon. A war cabinet and military leaders had the challenge of evaluating many competing demands for new aircraft and weapons at a time of limited resources. Inevitably, large sums of public money were expended in failed devices such as a curtain of aerial mines, an idea with which Churchill was enamored during the London Blitz.

Wallis, however, had a messianic fervor and got funding for his idea, over the objection of Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur (Bomber) Harris, who believed that bombing the civilian population of German cities, particularly Berlin, would end the war.

The development of the weapon was done with a speed only possible in wartime, with the first experiments taking place in early 1942, actual trials from aircraft conducted at end of 1942, and the formation of a squadron to practice such bombing in April,1943 (which at first failed). The raid itself took place on May 16/17, 1943.

Death rates for bomber crews at this time were only exceeded by the crews of submarines. Fewer than 20% of crews survived a 30 trip tour of operations and only 2.5% of aircrew finished a second tour. In the Dambusters Raid alone, eight of the 19 aircraft on the mission were lost (54 of the 133 men). Nor were the survivors spared future missions, and fewer than one-quarter of those who attacked the dams lived to see VE Day.

Hastings gives us intimate portraits of the individuals carrying out the raids, and their surrealistic life during wartime. Many were very young; some “never knew a woman” before they died. “We were trained with one object: to kill. We had one hope: to live.”

Hastings devotes a section of the book to the civilian victims of the bombing — those who lived and worked below the dams and who were drowned by the torrent of water as it unexpectedly swept down on them. Many, hearing the air raid warnings, had taken refuge in underground shelters, never expecting what would cause their deaths. And many were slave laborers — Russians, French, and other nationalities — who were captives working in wartime German factories and fields. This acknowledgement of innocent civilian victims of bombing has been ignored in many other descriptions of raids on Berlin, Hamburg, and other targets, and may reflect the distance with which we can now view World War II.

Both at the time, 1943, and for the war as a whole, the Dambusters Raid stands out as a purely British success. And because it came in the wake of a series of British disasters it acquired almost a mythical status. Most subsequent events leading to victory were joint British and American efforts.

This is a superb book, even for those who have some knowledge of the Dambusters Raid or saw the movie, released in 1955. As with the best of the books written by Hastings and his contemporary British historians, it is intimate at the same time providing a sense of the times now 75 years distant.

Excellent!!

The book brings a new perspective to the raid, with more emphasis on the personalities. Despite all the books I've read on the subject, Max was able to bring in many new views. A great summary of all the crews is provided as an appendix.

I really enjoyed Max Hastings' account of the Dam Busters' raid and the young men who participated in it. The section about the attack itself was particularly riveting. The author really took me into the surreal world of aerial bombing in WW2, captured so well in "Catch Twenty-two". I did, however, feel Hastings was a bit too harsh on 'Bomber' Harris. After all, the Germans set the tone for bombing cities early in the war (in Spain first....Guernica): Coventry, Warsaw, Rotterdam (after its surrender), Belgrade. If half a million German civilians died, let's remember that they, the Germans, were responsible for 18 million civilian deaths in Russia in WW2. Another thing that irked was Hasting's garbled writing in places. He has a knack of condensing his sentences in a way that compromises meaning and forces the reader to re-read, more than once, sometimes. Overall, though, a great read.

The author's writing style made this book a real struggle to read. I finally gave up about 20 pages from the end. A reader from England might disagree with this statement.
In the introduction the author abbreviates a main character's black dog's name to the common way the N word is currently used. He should have continued using this coded abbreviation throughout the text - I became weary of seeing the full word used so many times. It is never too late to right a wrong.
The English operation seemed vengeful against the civilian population living below the breeched dam, perhaps in revenge for Germany's attacks on London. Participants feigned no forethought as to the effect on civilians. I find this difficult to believe in such a necessarily thought out mission.
I will not retain this book in my collections.