All language subtitles for Classic.Movies.The.Story.Of.S03E03.Classic.Movies.The.Dam.Busters.1080p.NOW.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

(PLEASANT MUSIC DRIFTING)

(BIRDS CHIRPING)

I can't find it, Daddy,
I've looked EVERYWHERE!

All right, don't worry,
we'll find it in the morning.

I've got another one here.

Ready?

Stand by.

Four, three, two, one...

Fire! (SHOT)

Oh, I'm sorry, it's no good.

It's over there
in that flowerbed somewhere.

The glorious spectacle
of The Dam Busters
begins in the spring of 1942

in a pretty cottage
under a silver sky

where a bespectacled man
is playing marbles

with his children.

How unassuming, how very British...

Based on real events,

the 1955 epic is considered
one of the most complex, rousing

and realistic of war movies.

Would you say it has a legacy
as a sort of historical document?

And I mean in the sense of
what we understand and know
of that whole mission,

Operation Chastise,

really comes from the film.

I mean, I think you could argue

that it's probably
the most useful film
to understand World War Two overall

because this was a war

that was fought through
technological innovation
and mechanical production,

coupled with suitable intelligence

and the odd daring feat, you know?

I mean, this was a war
where the industrial power
of the two different sides

was critical.

(ATMOSPHERIC MUSIC)

(CONTINUES)

(FADES)

The man in question
is the brilliant and eccentric
aircraft engineer

Barnes Wallis,

played with strange nobility
by Michael Redgrave.

Rather than a game,

he is figuring out
how to get a marble
to skim along a tub of water

and hit a specific target.

He has already dreamed up
his miraculous bouncing bomb.

(SIGHS) Watch it, Christopher.

Four, three, two, one...

Fire! (SHOT)

Fire, that's good!

Mark it, Mary!

Barnes Wallis
was an engineer and inventor

who began work
in the shipping industry, in fact.

He was trained as an engineer,

he got a degree in engineering.

Clearly, it was in his blood

and he started to work

basically sort of improving
on various elements in shipping.

Very quickly, he decided
that he preferred aviation.

He was very, very gifted

in terms of finding new ways
of constructing
all kinds of machinery

and especially plane fuselages
that were lighter and stronger.

In fact, he invented
the geodesic structure

which made that the bombers
and the planes that were flying

in this construction

were far lighter and less likely
to actually suffer material damage.

Do you know how much water it takes
the Germans to make a ton of steel?

Haven't the least idea.
One hundred tons.

Now, just look at this.

The whole of this great arsenal
of war factories in the Ruhr

depends for its water
on three enormous dams.

The Mohne, the Eder and the Sorpe.

Directed with documentary poise
and understated emotion
by Michael Anderson,

The Dam Busters
is a film in two halves.

In the first,
we follow Wallis' attempts to prove
his ingenuous bomb will work.

In the second
comes the mission itself

led by the dashing
Wing Commander Guy Gibson,

played by Richard Todd
in a monument to un-showy valour.

Tell me a little bit about
the real history of The Dam Busters,

the famous Operation Chastise.

Operation Chastise
was a British operation

to try to destroy...

Well, to at least cripple

large parts
of the German industrial machine,
which was based in the Ruhr Valley,

where they had coalmines,

steelworks,

uh, and they were supplied
by three or four significant dams
for electric power

and to hold back the waters
of the river,

the Ruhr River.

The idea was that
if you destroyed these dams

you would cripple
German industrial production

and that would delay
all sorts of things

from armaments manufacture
to development of new weapons.

And it was seen really...

Actually almost from the beginning
of the Second World War
as an important operation.

The problem was
the technology wasn't there
to hit a dam.

The Germans had prepared against it
with nets to prevent torpedoes.

Conventional bombs
would run the risk of not hitting
the dam at all,

so the British had to work out a way
of getting a bomb up against the dam

to blow the dam apart

and that was...

It was as much a technical feat
of engineering invention

as it was
a feat of flying expertise.

In the end,

what happened
was the inventor Barnes Wallis

came up with what we now know
as the bouncing bomb,

which was a cylindrical bomb
with a particular kind of backspin

which once it hit
the wall of the dam
would sink straight to the bottom

and that's when
it would detonate its charge,

which would mean that
the charge would go off
at the base of the dam.

It would take more than one bomb
but they would eventually
blow the dam apart and release it

so it was...

We think of it as an
incredibly romantic adventure film

but really it's a film and a story
about technical and engineering
expertise

up against
a really complicated problem

and then new ways
of delivering that payload.

All set?
Yes, sir.

Well, you've done a fine job
with this team.

I couldn't have asked
for a better one.

Good luck.
Thank you, sir.

Good luck!

(CAR DOOR CLOSES)

Come on, then.

(DOOR CLOSES)

(REVVING)

This is the tale
of two contrasting men

who went beyond
what was required of them,

a vision of the courage it took
to strike at the heart of the enemy

in one of the most
unconventional missions
of World War Two

by bouncing a bomb into three dams,

devastating German industry
and turning the tide of the war.

I had at the back of my mind

the idea that while you couldn't
float anything along the surface,

you couldn't tickle it
with an existing bomb of any kind

and you couldn't float torpedoes
down towards it

because of the netting,
which hung down...

The only thing to do
is to make something which hopped

so I made something which hopped!

After a conversation
with a friend of his
who was a keen cricketer,

he discovered that
if he put a backspin on the bomb

then it would perform
exactly as he wanted it to.

Now,
he put all these things together

and that was an incredible
sort of feat of engineering
that had to be achieved,

not just in terms of
the bomb itself

but also
in the way it was delivered.

The wonderful thing about this,
in terms of the film,

is that you see this
in quite a lot of detail,

the development of how
he actually managed to achieve this,

the successes, the failures,

it was a...

It's like a sort of rhythm
that goes like this.

You know
that he's going to achieve it

because of course
we know the history of it

but the effort and the failures
in between

are what gives the film
its suspense.

And it all centres on
this figure of Barnes Wallis

who was, let's say,
to put it politely,

an eccentric gentleman!

He was...

I mean, he was a dedicated
aerodynamic engineer

all of his life, really.

He started off...

His father was a GP but was ill.

They lived in a state
of gentile distress, he said,

so he became
an engineering apprentice,

moved very quickly into
aircraft manufacture at Vickers

and began work on the airships,
the R-80 and the R-100,

and this is where he developed
what we would call
the geodesic design...

But if you think about
the way an airship is designed,

these struts
that are very, very firm,

very strong,

these lines that go from
one end of the airship to the other

and then the outside of the airship
is covered in fabric.

He moved that into bombers.

So, if you think about it,
it features in the film, in fact,

the Wellington bomber,
which is structured
much the same way.

A very, very strong basis
for the fundamental structure
of the object.

I mean, after the war,
he was involved in the aerodynamics
that would produce Concorde.

He was very interested
in flow and strength

and all these
sort of very nerdy details
about how minor things would work

and how you could get
the best possible effect

from the trickiest
little engineering adjustment.

Yet, more than simply depicting
a fascinating episode
of military history,

The Dam Busters is a meditation
on national identity
in the face of crisis,

held aloft by one of the most
stirring scores ever written.

I'll see what we can do.
Oh.

Well, goodbye.
Goodbye.

Goodbye.
Goodbye.

Goodbye.

And keep at it...
I think you've got something!

(STIRRING MUSIC)

(BLOWS)

(SHOT)

(TRUNDLING)

Contact port outer!

Contact port outer!

(ENGINES CONTINUE AND FADE)

In the vast tapestry
of World War Two,

few missions stand out
like Operation Chastise.

On the perfectly moonlit night
of May 16th 1943,

the 617 Squadron of Lancasters

took off from RAF Scampton
near Lincoln

to bomb the Mohne,
Edersee and Sorpe Dams
in the Ruhr Valley

using bouncing bombs
dropped from only 60 feet.

Two of the dams were destroyed.

Barnes Wallis and Guy Gibson
are very real heroes.

(MUSIC PLAYING)

The king and queen are welcomed
by Wing Commander Gibson

while visiting The Dam Busters.

His majesty congratulates
Australian Flight Lieutenant Martin,
who won the DSO.

The queen has a word
with an American

serving with the Canadian Air Force,

Flight Lieutenant McCarthy,
another DSO winner.

While Gibson's own Lancaster
stands majestically
in the background,

the king meets members of the crews
of the special task force

involved in the breaching
of the Mohne and Eder Dams.

These men, hand-picked,
were withdrawn from Bomber Command

to train in secret for this attack,
which had been long in prospect.

Wing Commander Gibson
received the VC for his gallantry

to add to
his four other decorations.

The operation achieved its aim,

in two ways, actually...

It did destroy two of the dams
at least,

they had slowed down the industry.

Also, at the same time,

it created a HUGE morale boost
for the British,

which gave them sort of
added impetus to continuing the war.

There was some criticism about it,

that it wasn't
a wholehearted success,

but...

'Cause the Germans
did actually rebuild the dams
and were sort of back functioning,

but it nonetheless...

The actual operation
worked as well as it could
under the circumstances

and did indeed slow down
the German war machine.

Now, obviously,
in a romanticised sense,

it makes for a great movie

but in a historical sense
there's some debate about whether
the dam busting was successful,

isn't there?

Yes, I mean,
it was literally successful

in that two of three dams
they set out to destroy
were destroyed.

And the Ruhr Valley was flooded...

What Barnes Wallis
and other people had hoped

was that the RAF
would then carpet-bomb the area

during the rebuilding

but there's a figure in the film,
the head of bomber command,

Bomber Harris,

who really didn't hold
with this mission.

In the film, he is shown as the guy
who backs the mission to the hilt

in the face of opposition
from the ministry

but, really,
he was not into low-flying.

He was not into
this sort of derring-do.

He thought the operation
was a waste of time.

He thought
it was a great feat of flying
but he didn't follow up.

So, the British
didn't bomb the valley

and the Germans were able to
rebuild the dams in, you know,

a number of months,
less than a year.

The Germans themselves
were not as convinced
that the raid had been a failure.

They were very, very dismayed by it.

Albert Speer, after the war,

talked about the damage
to the German industrial production.

Significantly, it also meant that
a lot of people working
on the concrete emplacements

for the D-Day landings

to protect against
the Allied invasion

had to be moved from the beaches
back to the Ruhr Valley
to rebuild the dams.

So, that meant that the...

When D-Day arrived,

this was not
the intention of the raid

but it meant that
when D-Day arrived
the defences there were weaker.

It's sort of a success
of unintended consequences.

It probably made the war shorter
but not in the way that was planned,

in a sense.

Now, there's a full moon tonight

so normal ops are out.

We'll be the only people flying

and to avoid the fighters
we'll have to keep a zero beat

all the way there and back.

(COMMOTION)

(ENGINE STARTS)

With World War Two
such a rich source

throughout the late '40s and '50s,

The Dam Busters story
was an ideal subject.

Howard Hawks had planned a version
with a script by Roald Dahl.

Michael Balcon tried at Ealing.

Producer Robert Clark
at the Associated
British Picture Corporation

succeeded by convincing
both the Royal Air Force
and a sceptical Wallis

that he would stay true
to the events.

But it was a sort of symbolic
success

and that's probably
one of the reasons
why it becomes a celebrated film!

It was.

They sent a Spitfire over
the following day

just to try and film the success.

I mean, this was the point at which
they were starting to use cameras
a lot in aircraft.

Guy Gibson, one of
the central characters in the film,

was obsessed with using cameras.

He was very keen
on filming the raids,

filming what was happening

and they sent a Spitfire out to film
the damage that had been done

and then the following day
the pictures were all over
the front pages of the newspapers

and it was seen,
spiritually, within the UK,

as a significant turning point
in the war

and we took the fight
to heart of Germany.

It was also very important
for two reasons with the Allies.

Stalin at this point
was fighting on the Eastern Front

and feeling VERY abandoned
by the West.

He was concerned that the Russians
were having to shoulder
the vast bulk of the war fighting

and the idea that the British
were at least doing something
mollified him a little,

made him feel that
there was a genuine alliance there

and also in America...

The Americans
weren't particularly interested
in aerial bombardment,

it was something
they didn't really see
the strategic significance of

and it was after the raid...

Guy Gibson's publicity tour
of the United States

was very, very important
in bringing the...

Not just public opinion round again
to the British way of doing things

but also this idea of bombing
as being a critical part of the war,

which, of course, in the end it was.

Authenticity was everything.

Screenwriter R.C. Sherriff,

best known for his poignant
World War One play, Journey's End,

drew from the historic account
by Paul Brickhill.

This remarkable Australian writer
had flown Spitfires

and escaped from a German POW camp

and also wrote the book
that inspired The Great Escape

and To Serve Them All My Days.

And Sherriff
actually met with Wallis,

who gave him a demonstration
of his home-made experiments.

When you're ready!

This should get our feet wet!

Watch it...

Fire!

(BOOMING)

(DEBRIS FALLING)

(TENSE BEAT)

Good heavens, that's wonderful!

Wonderful!

The person who really
made the film come to life

was an Australian journalist
called Paul Brickhill.

He had a rather extraordinary
early life.

He was a copyboy,
he went into journalism,

he joined the
Australian Royal Air Force

during the war.

He became a prisoner of war
in Germany

and it was while he was in
the prisoner of war camp in...

In fact, it was Stalag III,

that he became involved
in an extraordinary escape plan.

The problem was that he,
during the course of this,

he was going to escape
with everybody else,

developed claustrophobia,

so he was left behind.

As he was left behind
and he was with a few
of the other lads

who couldn't in fact
go on the plane,

they decided
that what they would do is...

They all had stories
about escape plans,

that they write them down
on tiny little bits of paper

so the Germans wouldn't find them.

Finally, he was released
and he wrote a book
about his experiences

and it was called
The Great Escape.

Extraordinary success!

As that book came out,

or in the process of him
writing that book,

somebody approached him to say,

"Well, look, you know, we love this
so how about The Dam Busters story?"

He got immediately interested
in that

and so he was actually writing
almost the two books
simultaneously!

He'd sort of more or less finished
The Great Escape

but then he started to work
on The Dam Busters book.

Incredibly, at the same time
as The Dam Busters book came out,

Douglas Bader,

who was trying to write
his own biography

of being a sort of heroic figure
in the RAF,

approached him and said,

"Will you write my autobiography?"

Extraordinarily enough,
he then wrote a third book
called Reach for the Sky

about Douglas Bader.

Director Michael Anderson
had only a handful of B-movies
to his name

but had worked alongside
Anthony Asquith and David Lean.

He had a reputation as a formidable
first assistant director.

Having served
with the Royal Corps of Signals,

his planning was meticulous

and his dedication to realism
such that he would send footage
to Wallis for his approval.

So, what is so extraordinary
about The Dam Busters?

It's virtually a docudrama

and you have all this vast amounts
of information and detail

and you needed a director
in Michael Anderson

who could pull it all together
and make it a compelling narrative!

Yes, Anderson
is a very interesting director.

By the time
The Dam Busters comes around,

he is building
a very strong reputation on set

but he hasn't yet found the material
to direct his great film.

He had started off as an actor

then he moved into
assistant directing.

He was production manager,

he worked on In Which We Serve
with David Lean

and then war broke out

and he was in
the Royal Signal Corps.

It's not clear what he did there,
but certainly part of that
is in comms.

It's not clear
whether he was filming.

And then he worked
with Peter Ustinov making films
in and around the war effort

and finally came out
and started working
on sort of neo-realist films.

There was a British film he made
called Waterfront,

which was about Liverpool
during the Depression,

which was very, very much
a sort of a precursor
to the Grim Up North films

of the sort of
the late '50s and '60s.

He wanted to do a very, very
realistic version of events.

I mean, if you read about
what he did, in terms of realism,

it is...

It is extraordinary!

I mean,
he went to Wallis and said...

Showed him footage and said,
"Is this how it happened?"

They wanted to shoot
real Lancaster Bombers.

He even wanted to cast people
who looked exactly like
the real figures they played!

And of course,
they also used actual footage

from Barnes Wallis' test runs.

He shot footage
of the tests of the bomb

to persuade the ministry
and to persuade the RAF

and, uh, Michael Anderson
cut in the literal footage
from those tests into the film,

which is why
it's in black and white,

so that those bits of
real-life footage can be used.

Now,
these are the first dropping tests

at the Chesil Beach near Weymouth.

Here comes the Wellington.

Matt Summers is the pilot
and I'm working the release gear.

(WHIRRING)

Now, in a moment,
you'll see the bomb.

There it goes... Now watch!

(WHIRRING CONTINUES AND FADES)

(ENGINE ROARING)

Well, I suppose there's nothing much
we can do.

Except wait...

The AOC's waiting
to take us back to Grantham.

(SEARCHING MUSIC)

Michael Redgrave
was an established star by 1955.

He had The Lady Vanishes
and The Browning Version behind him

and was lauded on stage.

He had also served
in the Royal Navy.

While he was a risky choice
for Wallis, being ten years younger,

Redgrave understood
that he was a reclusive genius

but with this unwavering belief
in his idea,

rolling up his trousers to retrieve
bomb test fragments from the sea

and staring down rooms
full of glowering civil servants...

The great thing about it
was of course that Redgrave
could act the part.

He was a superb actor,

one of the great lights
of the theatre.

And so, he took great care
in emulating

without being a sort of
impersonating Barnes Wallis

in his sort of
slightly boffin-ish air...

But what he really had
was this determination,

this sort of drive
to solve any problem.

This was what it was,

it was an engineering problem
for him.

This is why the film
has such an extraordinary
level of intensity

at the beginning AND at the end

because he realised
that he was a man, a scientist,

whose sole purpose
at this particular time

is focused on solving

this incredibly difficult problem
of precision.

Anderson
was so committed to accuracy

that he wanted his actors
to resemble their real counterparts.

That was one of the reasons
that made Richard Todd
so perfect for Gibson,

he looked just like him!

He also happened to be on contract
at Associated British

following active service
as a captain
in the parachute regiment,

dropping into Normandy on D-Day,

something he replayed
in The Longest Day.

(SIGHS)

I'm afraid
I'm asking a great deal of you...

Do you think you can fly it
to those limits?

Well, it's hard to say off hand.

The altimeter is no good
at that level

but, well, they've given me
some of the best pilots
in the Air Force

so we'll see what we can do.

You haven't tested
the full-sized bomb yet, have you?

No, it's being assembled now.

I hope to try it
in a week or ten days.

Do you really mean
that a five-ton bomb
can bounce along the water

like a ping-pong ball?

It's been hard to persuade
some people that it will

but I've every reason to believe
it will behave exactly
like those miniatures.

Well, how far from the target
do we drop the bomb?

Ah, that's the third factor
that I'm afraid
requires absolute accuracy.

I've got a little more work to do
on it

but I think it'll be 600 yards.

Did you invent this thing
out of your own head?

Well, yes, I...

I think I might say I invented it!

Well, I think it's terrific!

How would you describe the film?

Because it's not a documentary...

Somehow, Anderson has found a way
of making a very stirring,

a very passionate film

yet with this extraordinary
sort of British reserve.

Yes, it is, I think,
almost unlike any other war film

in that it's a film of two halves.

The first half is the individual
against the system film,

the one man, you know,
trying to get his idea across

against bureaucracy.

Sort of Kafkaesque in a sense
as he moves around the...

This is Barnes Wallis?
This is Barnes Wallis, yes.

This is Michael Redgrave
as Barnes Wallis,

moving around the corridors
of Whitehall,

trying to get seen,
waiting outside offices.

Somehow gripping
because they're showing
the invention.

We know it will work, we've seen...

Of course, partly because
we're watching the film,

but we know,
we've seen he's made it work,
we're backing him,

the humble guy
up against the ministry.

And then it flips at the moment
that he meets Gibson

and it starts to transition
into a heroic men on a mission movie

where Gibson's
putting together the team

and off they're going on the heist
sort of film.

And the crossover
is very, very gentle,

it doesn't quickly stop
and then you go over
to the air crew.

Gibson is with Wallis
during the test runs,

Gibson is backing Wallis.

I mean,
Gibson takes the whole process
very personally

and they work together
and they appear to like each other,

so it's a very...

It's about these two men,
the moment they meet,

how they work together

and then, if you like,
Wallis hands over the baton
of this mission

to the heroic pilot

and then all he can do
is pace and wait.

The camera drifts around the rooms
filled with British and Australian
aircrews,

capturing entire lives
in the accumulation
of pre-flight rituals.

Putting on a brave face
takes on a universe of meanings.

The detail of flying
resonates with the pragmatic courage
it takes to get into the air

against a barrage of flak.

And that is Robert Shaw
as Gibson's copilot,

Flight Sergeant John Pulford.

Shaw was a friend of Redgrave's

and Anderson was struck by how much
he too resembled the real man.

Virtually the entire cast
and surely most of the crew

came with first-hand experience
of the war.

This lent the film
an invaluable integrity.

They were not only honouring the men
of the mission

but their own comrades.

There is something enormously moving

about the way Todd
delivers Gibson's casual instruction

for the men to begin their mission.

"Come on, then."

(TENSE MUSIC)

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

One of the things
that Anderson does really well

is to take this really, really
big story and personalise it.

He REALLY gets into
intimate details of the characters

and he does this
by looking at them individually

and also in...

In groups.

One of the things
that Anderson is really good at

is showing how the pilots
prepare themselves
before this mission

which is almost suicidal...

And it's the calmness,
it is the calm before the storm.

The two Australian pilots,
for example, who are sharing a room,

they're sort of reading magazines

and then just throw them
across the room to each other
to sort of share their mags.

There's a little bit of jazz
playing in the background.

They could be just waiting
for their girlfriends to arrive.

Another man
is just writing a letter,

um, as many of them would have done,

and then he starts
winding his clock,

which he just leaves on his dresser.

There's even somebody who, actually,

just in fact when they're out,
sort of waiting to be picked up,

have a small game of cricket.

You know, and all of these things,

all of these things
show a relative normality,

a relative
sort of almost Zen kind of piece

before this mighty storm
that's approaching.

And I think that
that is really important

because what happens then
and what Anderson does brilliantly

is to show exactly the same rooms
afterwards,

empty.

And you understand,

you feel the cost
without having to show people
being killed.

You see the emptiness
and the vacancy

of where a human being once was.

Anderson approached the film
with a documentary clarity,

consciously shooting
in a sober black and white

in order to incorporate real footage
of the test runs

as well as shots
of the conveniently flooded
Ruhr Valley of 1955.

That is the real RAF Scampton
where the 617 was based.

Only the scene of Gibson
devising the targeting spotlights

while watching dancing girls
is a delightfully cinematic addition
to history.

(UPBEAT MUSIC)

(CONTINUES)

(DRONING)

Up a bit... A bit more.

Now hold it!

That's too much!

Down, down...

Now hold it now! Fine!

For the incredible shots
of their four Avro Lancasters

pirouetting over Lake Windermere
and Derwent Reservoir,

which stood in
for the German reservoirs,

real-life bomber pilots
had to fly as low as 30 feet
above the water.

It was the only way
for the perilous flying
to be effective on camera.

Meanwhile, a full-scale fuselage
was built on a gimbal

to bank and tilt
against back projection

with the actors
stoically at the controls.

So, let's talk about the realism
of the flying

because I think
everyone remembers the model work

and they remember also the music,
of course,

but the aerial photography
in The Dam Busters is peerless,

isn't it?

Yes, by the time the film was made
the Lancaster Bomber
had been retired by the RAF.

They still had a number mothballed
and they were...

The RAF lent them to the production

for what I think in today's terms
would be roughly £1.5 million!

So, it was...

You know, it was a publicity film
for the RAF,

but they were
still going to get their money!

And the bomber,

the Lancaster Bomber
had been replaced

by something called
the Lincoln Bomber,

which had a lot of similarities
in the way it was flown,

so the pilots for the Lincoln
were also allowed to fly
for the film.

So, they had three Lancasters
to represent the bombers

and one Lancaster to do the filming.

I mean, funnily enough,

the raid itself required the bombers
to fly at 60 feet above the water.

The filmmakers, when they saw
the Lancasters at 60 feet,

it actually didn't look
that dramatic to them

so they asked the Lancasters
to fly lower

at 40 feet above the water!

Wasn't it 30 feet?
I think they came down to 30 feet!

Yeah, they started at 40
and then they went down to 30,

to the point where sometimes
the propellers were actually almost
doing water spouts on the lakes

as they went over!

At one point, the pilot said,

"Well, what happens
if we crash and die?"

And they said, "Oh, well,
we probably won't do the film!"

So, it was hardly reassuring!

When you see the film,
there are two dams they go into,

which are represented
by two actual dams
in the Lake District,

two actual areas
in the Lake District,

one of which was as dangerous
to fly down as the film depicts

and the pilots were terrified
when they were flying down there

because to pull up in time
was GENUINELY dangerous!

So, they were flying
WAY beyond the extremes
for these aircraft!

They were flying at a level
that Guy Gibson wasn't flying!

The model work,

including a 40-foot dam
built at Elstree
to crack like piecrust,

was done before the main shoot

so that the aerial shots
could build towards
a specific climax.

Famously, the plunging Lancasters

were the inspiration
for the Death Star trench run

in George Lucas'
original Star Wars.

Lucas even employed Gill Taylor,

who had masterminded
the special effects photography

on The Dam Busters.

(DRONING)

Down, down, down, down...

Down...

We're too high!
Down...

We're too high, skipper,
we won't make it!

Steady... Hold it there!

It's too late, skipper,
it's too late!

(ROARING)

(JOYFUL MUSIC)

(FADES)

Eric Coates had no interest
in writing music for film,

which is exactly
what he told the producer

but Robert Clark
wouldn't take no for an answer,

convincing the classical composer

this was
a matter of honouring history

at which point Coates mentioned
he had written the perfect piece
only the day before!

The stirring, patriotic, legendary
Dam Busters March
has never been matched.

Indeed, it has become
the unofficial anthem
for the Royal Air Force.

The story goes

that he was experimenting
with Elgar-style marches.

He wanted to do something
in the form of Elgar

and when he was approached to write
the score for The Dam Busters,

he turned it down
because he wasn't interested
in film music,

he really wasn't...

However, when he was told that this
was a film of national significance

and importance,

he sort of changed his mind
and he started to work
and then he...

He thought,
"I have something that might work!"

Which was The Dam Busters March,

to all intents and purposes
which he'd already written.

It was his sort of tribute to Elgar.

They brought that in.

Clearly,
it was absolutely perfect for it!

He didn't want to write
too much of the rest of the music

and, in fact,
Leighton Lucas wrote a great deal
of the other music, such that it is,

incidental music
and things like that.

What's fascinating
is for a piece of music

which is now SO famous

and is, you know,
in the repertoire
of every military band

that ever existed,

especially during the flypasts
on the queen's birthday,

things like that...

Is that it's used
fairly infrequently in the film.

In fact,
the most significant part of it

is NOTHING to do with the flying,

it's to do when they're waiting
to get into the lorries

to take them to the Bombers.

It's kind of ironic really, though,
isn't it?

It's become triumphal,

yet, actually,
if you watch the film,

that's not kind of the message
of the film.

The film is very poignant
and very considered.

I mean, it takes a lot of unpacking,
I think,

that whole thing.

There's something about the film
that is...

It's a very un-triumphant movie,

it's a very sorrowful movie
towards the end.

It's about a mission

that we're not entirely certain
was as successful
as it was intended to be

and yet the music,

it's become this symbol
of sort of a jingoistic patriotism

which you think that
almost no one involved
in any part of that

would have had any interest in,
really!

There was a...

One of the original pilots
was on set during filming

and he said, at one point,

"I think you're making
a bit too much of this mission,
we just did our job!"

No one at any point
saw this as being this symbol
of jingoistic patriotism

but the music itself has created
this sort of mythical power

which I think, actually,
almost no one would have wanted,

in a strange way.

The power of The Dam Busters
lies in what is UNSAID.

So much of the story
is told in uncomplaining faces.

The lower half of his face
concealed beneath an oxygen mask,

Todd works wonders
with only his eyes

as he receives news
of the planes that have gone down.

Redgrave's Wallis
is quietly devastated

at the human cost of his great idea.

Rather than jingoism,

Anderson concludes
on a note of great solemnity,

the camera steadily watching
the returning hero Todd
walk into the distance,

his first duty being to write
to the families of the fallen.

Anderson, I think,
does an extraordinary job
of communicating what it's like

to be on board,

and more power to Richard Todd

because he does so much acting
with his eyes,

because his face is covered
with a mask,

and still conveys
great emotion and great courage

with very minimal gestures!

There is a particular point
where the three wings of the raid

go over the coast

and each...

The captain of each of those wings
says, "Enemy coast ahead!"

And at that point all of the stars
put masks across their faces

and from then on you don't...

All you've got is your eyes!

And they're conveying everything
from their terror

to their lack of understanding...

People keep popping up
and popping down,

it's a very active process!

But there's...
You can't see their faces!

Imagine that now,

that you would show
the stars of the film

but they would be completely hidden
from the audience's view!

It's a very, very,
very powerfully done
piece of acting by everybody.

Not just Richard Todd,
but all of the actors,

all of the bomb crew managed
to bring us on board with them!

Is it true? All those fellows lost?

Only two aircraft
went down in the attacks,

that was Hopgood's over the Mohne
and Maudslay's over the Eder.

Astell got it
soon after crossing the coast

and Dinghy Young
was shot down over the sea
on his way home.

And the rest we don't know about...

They've been calling them
since midnight
but they haven't answered.

The flak was bad,
worse than I expected.

Fifty-six men...

If I had known
it was going to be like this, I...

I'd never have started it.

Now, you mustn't think that way.

If all these fellows
had known from the beginning
they wouldn't be coming back,

they'd have gone for it
just the same.

Isn't a single one of them
would've dropped out,
I knew them all, that's true.

It's a REAL downbeat ending

but what it does is it shows...

And in fact, Richard Todd has said
that that was the hardest scene
for him to do

and as he's walking away
he was crying

because, of course,

as somebody who had been in the war
himself,

had been a captain,
parachute regiment,

he had himself
had to have written those letters

so he knew EXACTLY
what was going through the mind
of Guy Gibson

at that time

and I think that
that is achingly beautiful,

a wounding ending to the movie,

which is as significant
as it could possibly be.

Effecting the perfect balance
of patriotism and poignancy

for an audience
still nursing the wounds
of World War Two,

The Dam Busters became
the biggest British film of 1955.

The scope of the production
marks it out as a blockbuster
of its day

and it garnered an Oscar nomination
for its special effects.

But what endures
is its breathtaking detail...

It was a revelation for the viewer.

So, tell me,

what became of both
Guy Gibson and Barnes Wallis?

You know, after the mission?

Well, Guy Gibson
went on a large publicity tour
of the United States

and spent a long time out there
sort of drumming up interest
in the idea of bombing,

in the British war effort.

He became frustrated, he came back

and he then wanted
to get back into action

so he joined a Mosquito Squadron.

It was a plane
he was not experienced in.

He did...

Led a mission he was not
necessarily experienced to lead

and it is not certain
whether he was shot down

or whether he actually
ran out of fuel

because the Mosquito
had these two fuel tanks.

They found his plane
many years later
buried underground

and it's possible
that he just was not...

You know, he wanted to win,
he wanted to fight

and he wasn't ready for that plane,

which is quite heartbreaking,
in a way,

if you think...

The idea that at the end
he died in the air

but not in the way
that he would have wanted to,
who knows...

Barnes Wallis
then went on inventing.

I mean, he went on inventing
till his retirement in 1971.

He contributed to designs
that led to Concorde.

He was...

He never produced anything
as epoch-making as the bouncing bomb

but his bombing ideas
did lead to significant
bunker-busting bombs.

He probably has more influence
on warfare

than he would like to admit.

Certainly, after the raid,

when he saw the human cost,

he was so horrified
that he refused to let a test pilot
into any of his inventions

until it had been
very, very significantly tested
by models.

He was terrified of losing
a single other pilot's life.

The Dam Busters is not simply
a captivating men on a mission
movie

or an account
of great British guile

or, for that matter,

a shining example of the ingenuity
of British filmmaking in the '50s

in the quiet dedication
of these men,

led by Wallis and Gibson,

but Anderson's objective
was to document a history
that had been mythologised.

Remarkably, in 1955,

there were elements
of Operation Chastise
that were still classified.

The fact that the bombs
spun backwards for stability

had to be covered up
in the real footage.

Nevertheless,

the film stands
as the defining testament

to the achievements
of two remarkable men.

Aren't you going to turn in, Gibby?

No, I...
I have to write some letters first.

(BIRDS CHIRPING IN DISTANCE)

(TENDER MUSIC)

(CONTINUES)

(FADES)

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