Chastise: The Dambusters Story 1943

(Hardback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

A masterly history of the Dambusters raid from bestselling and critically acclaimed Max Hastings.
Operation Chastise, the overnight destruction of the Mhne and Eder dams in north-west Germany by the RAFs 617 Squadron, was an epic that has passed into Britains national legend.

Max Hastings grew up embracing the story, the classic 1955 movie and the memory of Guy Gibson, the 24-year-old wing-commander who won the VC leading the raid. In the 21st Century, however, Hastings urges that we should review the Dambusters in much more complex shades. The aircrews heroism was wholly authentic, as was the brilliance of Barnes Wallis, who invented the bouncing bombs. But commanders who promised their young fliers that success could shorten the war fantasised wildly. What Germans call the Mhnekatastrophe imposed on the Nazi war machine temporary disruption, rather than a crippling blow.

Hastings vividly describes the evolution of Wallis bomb, and of the squadron which broke the dams at the cost of devastating losses. But he also portrays in harrowing detail those swept away by the torrents. Some 1,400 civilians perished in the biblical floods that swept through the Mhne valley, more than half of them Russian and Polish women, slave labourers under Hitler.

Ironically, Air Marshal Sir Arthur Bomber Harris gained much of the credit, though he opposed Chastise as a distraction from his city-burning blitz. He also made what the author describes as the operations biggest mistake the failure to launch a conventional attack on the Nazis huge post-raid repair operation, which could have transformed the impact of the dam breaches upon Ruhr industry.

Chastise offers a fascinating retake on legend by a master of the art. Hastings sets the dams raid in the big picture of the bomber offensive and of the Second World War, with moving portraits of the young airmen, so many of whom died; of Barnes Wallis; the monstrous Harris; the tragic Guy Gibson, together with superb narrative of the action of one of the most extraordinary episodes in British history.

Reviews

Praise for Chastise

A virtuoso performance from a veteranmilitary historian. It is a white-knuckle narrative that brings clarity and insight to a much-loved tale, as well as offering a vital corrective to the drum-thumping conclusions of earlier books. Sunday Times

Hastings recounts the actual raids with dramatic intensity He brings us into those Lancasters, flying perilously low, straight into flak Superb. Times

Thoughtful and gripping This is a fine book combining great storytelling with a deep appreciation of the melancholy and waste that march in step with glory. Patrick Bishop, Telegraph

What is at stake in this revision of the old glorious narrative is something important. The debate over whether this particular raid mattered is, in miniature, the wider historiographical debate over the morals and efficacy of the whole bombing war A powerful parable which might instruct us in our own confused times. Spectator

Hastings, who is a master of his craft, unfolds the story skilfully It doesnt matter how many times you have seen the film, or heard the story, this book is gripping from start to finish Keith Lowe, Literary Review

A riveting account that also shines a light on the fact that more than 1,400 civilians died in the floods that followed Its a monumental read Sun

A fine book about that moonlit Dambusters raid of 76 years ago, a worthy tribute to the men of 617 Squadron and their hapless victims Sunday Express

A remarkable book Combining formidable narrative power with equally potent explanatory insight, it situates the Dambusters Raid in the broader strategic context of World War II Washington Post

Author Bio

Max Hastings is the author of twenty-six books, most about conflict, and between 1986 and 2002 served as editor-in-chief of the Daily Telegraph, then editor of the Evening Standard. He has won many prizes both for journalism and his books, of which the most recent are All Hell Let Loose, Catastrophe and The Secret War, best-sellers translated around the world. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of Kings College, London and was knighted in 2002. He has two grown-up children, Charlotte and Harry, and lives with his wife Penny in West Berkshire, where they garden enthusiastically.