Free The Dam Busters by Paul Brickhill

he gave him the greatest honour he could think of… when (or if) the Moehne Dam was breached he would radio back the one code word “Nigger.”
    In the hangars, messes and barracks the Tannoy came loudly and dramatically to life : “All pilots, navigators and bomb aimers of 617 report to the briefing room immediately.” At three o’clock there were some sixty of them in the briefing room on the upper floor of the grey-and-black camouflaged station headquarters. They sat silently on the benches, eyeing the familiar maps, aircraft identification and air-sea rescue posters on the walls, waiting. Whitworth, Gibson and Wallis filed down the centre to the dais and Whitworth nodded to Gibson : “Go ahead, Guy.” The room was still.
    Gibson faced them, feet braced apart, flushed a little. He had a ruler in one hand, the other in his pocket, and his eyes were bright. He cleared his throat and said :
    “You’re going to have a chance to clobber the Hun harder than a small force has ever done before.” Outside his voice, no sound. “Very soon we are going to attack the major dams in Western Germany.” A rustle and murmuring broke the silence—and some deep breaths. They were going to have a sporting chance. Gibson turned to the map and pointed with his ruler.
    “Here they are,” he said. “Here is the Moehne, here the Eder and here is the Sorpe. As you can see, they are all just east of the Ruhr.” He went on to explain the tactics, told each crew what wave they would be on and what dam they were to attack.
    Wallis took over and described the dams and what the queer bombs were supposed to do, how success would cripple the Ruhr steel industry, how other factories would be affected and bridges and roads washed away.
    Gibson stood up. “Any questions?”
    Hopgood said: “I notice, sir, that our route takes us pretty near a synthetic rubber factory at Huls. It’s a hot spot. I nearly got the hammer there three months ago. If we go over there low I think it might… er… upset things.”
    Gibson looked thoughtfully at the map. Huls was a few miles north of the Ruhr. Satterly and he had known about the Huls flak: when they were planning the route but had taken the track as far away from the Ruhr as they could. Better the flak at Huls than the Ruhr.
    “If you think it’s a bit too close to Huls we’ll bring it down a bit,” and he pencilled in a wider curve round the little dot. “You’d better all be careful here. The gap isn’t too wide. Err on the Huls side if you have to, but watch it you navigators.”
    He crossed the room to a couple of trestle-tables where three dust covers were hiding something, pulled the covers off, and there were the models of the dams.
    “All of you come over and have a look at these,” he commanded., and there was a scraping of forms as sixty young men got up and crowded round,.
    “Look at these till your eyes stick out and you’ve got every detail photographed on your minds, then go away and draw them from memory, come back and check your drawings, correct them, then go away and draw them again till you’re perfect.”
    They were two hours doing that; each crew concentrated on its own target, working out the best ways in and the best ways out. The known flak guns were marked and they took very special note of them. Martin’s crew were down for the Moehne with Gibson and Hopgood, and they stood gazing down at the model.
    “What d’you reckon’s the best way in?” Leggo asked.
    “First thing is to get the final line of attack,” Martin said. “There’s the spot!” He put his ringer on the tip of a spit of land running out into the Moehne Lake and ran his fingertip in a straight line to the middle of the dam wall, right between the two towers. It met the wall at right angles. “A low wide circuit,” he said; “come in over the spit and we’re jake.”
    It was eight o’clock before Gibson was satisfied they knew it all and said, “Now buzz off and get some grub. But