DAM BUSTERS, THE 73
gun turrets were removed to mimic 617 Squadron’s special- purpose aircraft). The
planes, supplied by the RAF, cost £130 per hour to run— a tenth of the film’s pro-
duction costs. The long, narrow reservoirs in the Upper Derwent Valley, Derbyshire,
a few miles west of Sheffield— the test area for the real raids— stood in for the Ruhr
valley for the film. Coastal scenes were shot between Skegness and King’s Lynn,
Norfolk, on the En glish Channel, and additional aerial footage was shot north of
Windermere, in the Lake District. The film set some scenes at RAF Scampton,
where the real raid was launched, but most ground location shooting took place at
still- operational RAF Hemswell, just north of Scampton and 55 flight miles due
east of the Upper Derwent Valley. Several obsolete Avro Lincolns mothballed at
Hemswell prior to being broken up were used to double for additional 617 Squad-
ron Lancasters on the ground. Active- duty RAF pi lots based at Hemswell flew the
Lancasters during filming.
Plot Summary
At the start of World War II, Barnes Wallis (Michael Redgrave), a British aeronau-
tical engineer, works to come up with a way to destabilize German dams in order
to disrupt the flow of their industry. In addition to his work for the Ministry of
Aircraft Production and his position at Vickers, Wallis toils away to invent a buoy-
ant bomb capable of dodging torpedo nets by skimming over the water’s surface.
In theory, when the bomb would reach the dam, it would have to sink before
detonation in order to pack the most punch and cause the most destruction. Wal-
lis deduces that the bomb’s delivery plane would have to fly very close to the water
in order to allow the bomb to skim across effectively. Wallis brings his ideas to the
ministry and is turned down due to an inability to produce newly proposed weap-
ons. Not to be thwarted easily, Wallis meets with Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris
(Basil Sydney), the head of RAF Bomber Command, in order to procure the
resources necessary to create his bombs. Hesitant at first, Harris eventually approves
Wallis’s plans, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill (not depicted on screen)
authorizes the proj ect. A special unit of bombers is assembled, to be led by Wing
Commander Guy Gibson (Richard Todd). Gibson puts together a tried- and- true
team with experience flying at lower altitudes. As the pi lots train, Wallis perfects
his bomb, pushing through setbacks and recalculating drop altitudes. Weeks away
from the mission date, Wallis works out the kinks and provides the bombers with
a working explosive. The bombers fly low and attack the dams as planned. Although
eight Lancasters and on- board crew members perish, two dams are successfully
breached.
Reception
The Dam Busters premiered at the Empire Theatre, Leicester Square, London on 16
May 1955 (the 12th anniversary of the raid), with Princess Margaret and 617 Squad-
ron veterans and family members in attendance. UK box office numbers are
unknown, but the London Times reported that The Dam Busters was the “most prof-
itable film” in Great Britain in 1955 (The Times, 29 December 1955). Con temporary
notices on both sides of the Atlantic were uniformly adulatory. The anonymous