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Operation Chastise, the audacious RAF bombing raid that struck at the heart of industrial Germany on the 17th of May 1943, brought catastrophic damage to the three dams that served the Ruhr Valley. Water and electricity supplies were disrupted in a key area of the manufacture of Germany’s war munitions, and the consequences were disastrous. The German war effort was set back substantially, the Allies celebrated, and Dr. Barnes Wallis became a national hero as the designer of the famed ‘bouncing bomb’ that inflicted such damage. Considered from an Allied perspective, the Dambuster Raid was a triumphant success, not only of British engineering but also of pilot endeavour. View it from the German perspective however, and an entirely new story emerges. That is precisely what we have here. In this image-heavy publication, Helmuth Euler explores all facets of the operation in fascinating detail, offering a host of illuminating insights into this much-studied event of twentieth century history.

Review

It is difficult to know where to start with this book; Helmuth Euler is an experienced Dambuster historian and film maker whose first book on the subject The Dambuster Raid – ‘Through The Lens’ was primarily a good, comprehensive, photographic account of the raid.
In this book he has attempted to write an account biased towards the German viewpoint with associated photographs. Much of his detail is admirable in its intent and some of it is new in my experience of more than 35 years of studying the raid alongside Barnes Wallis’ other work.
Several parts of it are spoilt by what appears to be sloppy translation, that one can follow, but it does not read correctly from a British perspective. The publishers should have picked up on this and someone should also have advised them that his metric units as applied to speed, dimensions and weight are entirely inappropriate in the context of this famous wartime operation.
First time readers of the Dambuster story should avoid this book if they are interested in accuracy as it contains several glaring errors repeated in some other publications, it seems that other authors copy the errors in some cases. Euler has made the mistake of believing eye witness accounts verbatim, years after the event. Ask two inexperienced people to recount any event and you will often get two different stories and this is the case with some accounts in this book.
The biggest error and repeated in some other publications, is the direction of attack at the Sorpe Dam. I feel Euler may be the prime source of this error that others have copied. He repeats the claim that Canadian pilot Ken Brown attacked the Dam at 90 degrees to the earthen bank, flying towards the dam as was the case at the Mohne and Eder. This is not only wrong but cannot make sense if one examines the speed of the aircraft, the forward momentum of any released weapon (not bouncing), the reaction time of the bomb aimer in dark misty conditions and the severe sloping ground on the air side of the dam. Indeed Brown had to drop flares in order to see where the dam was amidst the dark, tree lined background. The attack as described by Euler and others is nonsense; both attacks by Brown and McCarthy were made parallel to the dam with the weapon being dropped on the water side without backspin; the reason being that the Sorpe was an earthen dam with a concrete core and without a face for the weapon to cling to. Brown’s Navigator, Dudley Heal, describes the attack in detail in a recording held by the Imperial War Museum and available on their website. This account alone should put an end to the inaccuracies propagated in various publications.

I’m not sure of the purpose of showing photographs of drowning victims, many of whom were children. This was not the raid’s intention and war is a nasty business, I suppose it enhances the German viewpoint of it being a flood disaster as opposed to the Allies viewpoint of a propaganda victory and the destruction of many strategic targets.
It is littered with many other errors, which makes it the wrong book to read if one wishes to find out accurate information as a first time reader. The undoubted books to read for accuracy are any of John Sweetman’s publications; Alan Cooper’s books on the personnel involved in the raid are also very worthy of reading.
Euler’s book is well worth reading if you are an experienced historian of the raid and can pick out the errors and absorb the good stuff, but it is not for the first time reader.