The Dam Busters: Breaking the Great Dams of Western Germany 16-17 May 1943

Rating:
Summary: Oddly fascinating
Review: This book, written almost like a documentary script, details the Allied efforts to target German dams during World War Two. In very methodical, but also enthusiastic fashion, they figured out what plane, what bomb, what angle, what altitude, etc., were necessary to inflict maximum damage to the dams, while minimizing losses to the planes. The answer they came up with, sounds absurd, but it worked: very large, cylindrical bombs rotating backwards at a high rate of speed, causing them, when dropped, to skip along the sureface of the water, right up to the base of the dam. This story sounds very dry when described but, when I read it, I found it very intriguing.