Operation Chastise, Max Hastings
Operation Chastise, Max Hastings
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Operation Chastise
The RAF's Most Brilliant Attack of World War II

Author: Max Hastings

Narrator: Max Hastings, Peter Noble

Unabridged: 11 hr 49 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 02/18/2020


Synopsis

One of the most lauded historians of our time returns to the Second World War in this magnificent retelling of the awe-inspiring raid on German dams conducted by the Royal Army Force’s 617 Squadron.The attack on Nazi Germany’s dams on May 17, 1943, was one of the most remarkable feats in military history. The absurdly young men of the Royal Air Force’s 617 Squadron set forth in cold blood and darkness, without benefit of electronic aids, to fly lumbering heavy bombers straight and level towards a target at a height above the water less than the length of a bowling alley. Yet this story—and the later wartime experience of the 617 Squadron—has never been told in full. Max Hastings takes us back to the May 1943 raid to reveal how the truth of that night is considerably different from the popularized account most people know. The RAF had identified the Ruhr dams as strategic objectives as far back as 1938; in those five years Wing Commander Guy Gibson formed and trained the 617 Squadron. Hastings observes that while the dropping of Wallis’s mines provided the dramatic climax, only two of the eight aircraft lost came down over the dams—the rest were shot down on the flight to, or back from, the mission. And while the 617 Squadron’s valor is indisputable, the ultimate industrial damage caused by the dam raid was actually rather modest. In 1943, these brave men caught the imagination of the world and uplifted the weary spirits of the British people. Their achievement unnerved the Nazi high command, and caused them to expend large resources on dam defenses—making the mission a success. An example of Churchill’s ""military theatre"" at its best, what 617 Squadron did was an extraordinary and heroic achievement, and a triumph of British ingenuity and technology—a story to be told for generations to come.

About Max Hastings

Max Hastings is the author of twenty-eight books, most about conflict, and between 1986 and 2002 served as editor in chief of the Daily Telegraph, then as editor of the Evening Standard. He has won many prizes, for both his journalism and his books, the most recent of which are the bestsellers Vietnam, The Secret War, Catastrophe, and All Hell Let Loose. Knighted in 2002, Hastings is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of King’s College London, and a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He has two grown children, Charlotte and Harry, and lives with his wife, Penny, in West Berkshire, where they garden enthusiastically.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Lee on March 10, 2022

An enjoyable recounting of the Dambusters' story. Its told in a journalistic style and can be dry at times, with some superfluous detail but the story of Barnes Wallis' vision coming to fruition and the challenges involved in the raid itself are compelling. The book's style is very establishment and......more

Goodreads review by Bill on June 09, 2021

The aircraft csrrtier HMS Queen. Elizabeth is currently leading a force to the South China Sea, including in her complement F-35B fighters belonging to RAF 617 Squadron, the famous Dam Busters of the Second World War. It seems wonderful that both the RN and the RAF so preserve the memories of great......more

Goodreads review by Joyce on May 27, 2020

Too many details and should-we-have-done-its for this generalist reader. Interested in WWII but clearly not enough to really appreciate this account.......more

Goodreads review by Mal on April 01, 2020

The strategic bombing of German cities remains to this day one of the most controversial aspects of World War II. Relentless, round-the-clock assaults on the German people resulted in the deaths of between 350,000 and 500,000, among them huge numbers of POWs and imported slave workers. The firebombi......more

Goodreads review by Gerard on October 09, 2019

Max Hastings provides a rather dry read, but an important one. I found it useful to remove the fallacy from the story, because the bravery of the people involved shines through even more. There is also due respect given to those who suffered as a result of the flooding—civilians and forced labourers......more