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The Dam Busters

110 statements
20 feature instances
12 referencing feature instances

The Dam Busters	type	TVTItem
The Dam Busters	label	The Dam Busters
The Dam Busters	page	TheDamBusters
The Dam Busters	comment	The Dam Busters is a 1955 British film starring Richard Todd and Michael Redgrave. The story of the Dam Busters is one which brings out several features of the British — the sophistication of their engineering innovation, the bravery of their armed forces, the incompetence of their leaders and their unerring ability to be first in a technical field and then leave it to others to make money out of it (for example, see Babbage and Turing...or Whittle...)At the beginning of WW2, the engineer (then not yet Sir) Barnes Wallis (played by Redgrave) pointed out that bombs rarely did much damage to hardened military installations unless they hit them right on the button (and often not much even then). What was needed was a way of transmitting ALL of the bomb's energy into the target rather than expending most of it in the air. Wallis proposed that bombs should be designed so that they penetrated the ground around the target rather than hitting it directly, and then went off under it, creating a hole into which the target would fall. The idea was brilliant and would have worked, but his initial proposal called for a bomb so large that no aircraft then in existence could carry it; the six-engined "Victory" bomber Wallis designed to do the job would have been little use for anything else and hideously expensive besides, so the Air Ministry were less than enthusiastic.Eventually, when he was allowed to work for the war effort, a targeting committee took him at his word when he said that dams were a good example of a target, and suggested that he take out the main Ruhr dams at night, when precision bombing would be out of the question, and when the Germans were defending against torpedoes with a series of nets.Wallis came up with the idea of making a 5-ton spinning bomb which would skip across the water, hit the dam wall, then sink to the bottom before exploding. The water would focus the force of the blast against the dam's wall, in much the same way that a good torpedo hit causes more damage to a ship's hull than would an equivalent amount of explosives in a bomb or artillery shell. The bombs were duly made in a tearing hurry and delivered by a crack team flying Lancasters in pitch darkness 60ft over water, nearly half of whom did not come back. The bombs worked, though the most important dam survived and the impact on the German war effort from destroying the others was somewhat underwhelming.Having suffered almost 50% losses for disappointing results, the British mothballed the bouncing-bomb concept and never attacked the dams again, letting the Germans rebuild them. Wallis was allowed to develop his 'earth penetrator' bombs which were staggeringly effective — taking out bridges and viaducts, sinking the Tirpitz, stopping the V2 and V3 developments, destroying U-boat pens at Brest with 33ft reinforced concrete roofs in one attack, and blowing up a railway line which ran under a mountain by dropping the bomb THROUGH the mountain and into the tunnel beneath.Such a weapon would be of inestimable value for precision attack against individual targets of the kind we have had in the many small wars since 1945. So it figures that the British establishment promptly forgot about all the oily rag theory that Wallis had worked so carefully on, and just kept making airburst bombs which remain inefficient. The British people, on the other hand, remember the astonishing sight of 5-ton bombs bouncing along the surface of a reservoir, and think to this day that that was the whole purpose of the mission.617 Squadron, the RAF unit tasked with all this, still exists and flies F-35 Lightnings today.Paul Brickhillnote famous for living through, and then writing an account of The Great Escape wrote a novelised history of 617 Squadron's WWII action, called The Dambusters. This was later made into a movie in 1954. A remake is planned for 2010 2011 or maybe 2012.Notable for its influence (along with 633 Squadron) on Star Wars: the trench run was heavily inspired by the climax of the film. Several lines of dialogue are actually re-used, nearly verbatim. It's also known for having several clips used in the 1982 film version of Pink Floyd's The Wall.A young Patrick McGoohan has a bit part as a guard.
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The Dam Busters	processingComment	Dropped link to TheOfficeUK: Not a Feature - ITEM
The Dam Busters	processingComment	Dropped link to TheWall: Not a Feature - ITEM
The Dam Busters	isPartOf	DBTropes
The Dam Busters / int_1f799027	type	Obstructive Bureaucrat
The Dam Busters / int_1f799027	comment	Obstructive Bureaucrat: Wallis encounters a few in the film's first act, because the RAF is short on bombers at the point in the war.
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The Dam Busters / int_2bdae2ae	type	Awesome, but Impractical
The Dam Busters / int_2bdae2ae	comment	Awesome, but Impractical: The weapon itself, though the film downplays this. It was a very effective piece of technology but almost suicidally dangerous to deploy, requiring a heavy bomber to fly in a perfectly straight line at treetop height, a painfully easy target for Anti-Air or passing fighters. Neither were the British able to devise a casing strong enough to withstand a ground impact yet light enough to be carried by the Lancaster, and the bombs had a nasty habit of rebounding unpredictably when used over even mildly choppy water, so they were only really useful for this one specific job.
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The Dam Busters / int_3517000d	type	Mad Scientist
The Dam Busters / int_3517000d	comment	Mad Scientist: Barnes Wallis, whilst not actually mad (even though some of his inventions were seen that way), was certainly as prolific as the archetype — he invented geodetic frames for aircraft, designed airships and aeroplanes, the bouncing and earthquake bombs, and after the war worked on swing-wing and supersonic aircraft, rocket-propelled torpedos, and even came up with designs for cargo submarines that were faster and more efficient than comparable surface ships.
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The Dam Busters / int_3e8c87a3	type	Dated History
The Dam Busters / int_3e8c87a3	comment	Dated History: The mission is portrayed as a great success, with a Giant Wall of Watery Doom washing away the Ruhr industry. In truth the operation had more success as a propaganda victory than on German war production, and many of those killed were Soviet forced laborers.
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The Dam Busters / int_3eee0728	type	Captain Obvious
The Dam Busters / int_3eee0728	comment	Captain Obvious: One of Gibson's crew: "This is bloody dangerous!"
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The Dam Busters / int_45262f16	type	Big Dam Plot
The Dam Busters / int_45262f16	comment	Big Dam Plot
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The Dam Busters / int_56515a39	type	Artistic License â€“ History
The Dam Busters / int_56515a39	comment	Artistic License â€“ History: Partially justified as it wasn't until many years after the film that many of the facts were declassified. Planning to hit the dams had actually started in 1936, when war was inevitable. The '2 search light' technique was invented by a long forgotten civil servant who was working on the height problem.
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The Dam Busters / int_716d9138	type	Bar Brawl
The Dam Busters / int_716d9138	comment	Bar Brawl: A mess room brawl. While waiting for conditions to be perfect for the raid, 617 Squadron members got teased a lot by the members of other squadrons at RAF Scampton. After Gibson allows them to let off steam, one of these occurs.
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The Dam Busters / int_7e74d66f	type	Politically Correct History
The Dam Busters / int_7e74d66f	comment	Politically Correct History: The name of Gibson's black Lab is well... not exactly PC and in 1999, the movie was shown in TV with "Trigger" dubbed over. It's intact on the DVD. In recent (as of 2020) screenings on British TV, the dog's name (and the subsequent code word based on it) are skillfully edited out of the audio. At one point Gibson can be seen saying the real name while the words "my dog" are substituted on the soundtrack. The original scene is in The Wall when Pink is freaking out in his hotel room. Roger Waters remarks on the censorship in the DVD commentary for The Wall, because "Trigger" was the name of Roy Rogers' horse. Referenced in The Office (UK). The difference is between the British and US releases. In the UK at the time of the events, that wasn't an unacceptable word. By the time the film was made, it was an unacceptable word in the US. (Not necessarily for the obvious reason today. It would have counted as a very vulgar swear word.)
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The Dam Busters / int_7fc8cf2c	type	Airstrike Impossible
The Dam Busters / int_7fc8cf2c	comment	Airstrike Impossible: One of the classic examples. The climax of the movie involves a series of low-altitude bombing runs, with the bombers flying in the face of heavy anti-aircraft defenses.
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The Dam Busters / int_87504252	type	The Big Board
The Dam Busters / int_87504252	comment	The Big Board: A few of them.
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The Dam Busters / int_88a97dd4	type	Stiff Upper Lip
The Dam Busters / int_88a97dd4	comment	Stiff Upper Lip: Taken as read - it is a British war film after all. One of the more heartbreaking examples, in the final line of the movie. Wallis and Gibson discuss the deaths of the crews in the night's mission (see My God, What Have I Done? above), and as they part ways Wallis asks Gibson if he's going to go and get some sleep. His answer? "No. I... I have to write some letters first". That little crack in his voice is about the only indication you have of his grief over the death of 56 of his men. The letters he has to write, of course, are to the wives and parents of those men telling them of the death of their loved ones. He didn't have to do it, especially not right at that moment, the War Office would inform them by telegram - but he wanted to ensure that the families got something more personal as soon as possible. Subverted by Wallis, who is too artless to hide his feelings. The film shows him on the verge of tears on two occasions, once when the mission's success is reported, and the second time in the above-mentioned conversation with Gibson.
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The Dam Busters / int_8f9f71a8	type	Crazy Enough to Work
The Dam Busters / int_8f9f71a8	comment	Crazy Enough to Work: The book makes it quite clear: This only worked because nobody had ever tried anything like this before, so none of the generally simple and easy to build defenses that would have made it completely impossible were in place.
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The Dam Busters / int_9788e2b1	type	Black Dude Dies First
The Dam Busters / int_9788e2b1	comment	Black Dude Dies First: Gibson's black dog with the problematic name is run-over half-way through the film, shortly before the crew start the mission. (No one of African descent appears in the film).
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The Dam Busters / int_a1b141f4	type	My God, What Have I Done?
The Dam Busters / int_a1b141f4	comment	One of the more heartbreaking examples, in the final line of the movie. Wallis and Gibson discuss the deaths of the crews in the night's mission (see My God, What Have I Done? above), and as they part ways Wallis asks Gibson if he's going to go and get some sleep. His answer? "No. I... I have to write some letters first". That little crack in his voice is about the only indication you have of his grief over the death of 56 of his men. The letters he has to write, of course, are to the wives and parents of those men telling them of the death of their loved ones. He didn't have to do it, especially not right at that moment, the War Office would inform them by telegram - but he wanted to ensure that the families got something more personal as soon as possible.
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The Dam Busters / int_ae3d6438	type	Deadpan Snarker
The Dam Busters / int_ae3d6438	comment	Deadpan Snarker: One of the planes clips a tree, ending up with foliage in its undercarriage. "You don't suppose we should take it back?"
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The Dam Busters / int_bc103f8b	type	Subverted
The Dam Busters / int_bc103f8b	comment	Subverted by Wallis, who is too artless to hide his feelings. The film shows him on the verge of tears on two occasions, once when the mission's success is reported, and the second time in the above-mentioned conversation with Gibson.
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The Dam Busters / int_ea6fdefb	type	Casual Danger Dialog
The Dam Busters / int_ea6fdefb	comment	Casual Danger Dialog: "Power lines." The film has them climb over them; in reality, some crews flew under them. This wasn't to show off; trying to climb too suddenly would cause a loss of speed, and hence increase in angle of attack, which would lead to the aircraft "mushing" into the lines. If there was space it was safer to go under.
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The Dam Busters / int_f38dccf5	type	Strolling Through the Chaos
The Dam Busters / int_f38dccf5	comment	Strolling Through the Chaos: Gibson during the aforementioned riot. Avoids a chair, a pair of pants and several airmen (though he does stop to deck a man who's double-teaming one of his own men).
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

TheDambusters	sameAs	The Dam Busters
The Dam Busters	hasFeature	Airstrike Impossible / int_25671359
The Dam Busters	hasFeature	Belly-Scraping Flight / int_c22e7b79
The Dam Busters	hasFeature	Big Dam Plot / int_c22e7b79
The Dam Busters	hasFeature	Black Dude Dies First / int_25671359
The Dam Busters	hasFeature	Fighter-Launching Sequence / int_25671359
The Dam Busters	hasFeature	Orchestral Bombing / int_25671359
The Dam Busters	hasFeature	Radio Voice / int_25671359
The Dam Busters	hasFeature	Soft Water / int_25671359
The Dam Busters	hasFeature	Strolling Through the Chaos / int_c22e7b79
The Dam Busters	seeAlso	The Dam Busters
The Dam Busters	hasFeature	The Glasses Come Off / int_c22e7b79

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