Chastise: The Dambusters Story 1943 – Signed Copy

Max Hastings

ISBN: 9780008280529

£25.00

Signed First Edition hardback copy of Chastise: The Dambusters Story 1943 by Max Hastings

Hand Signed by Max Hastings to the title page

The book will be signed at our event with Max Hastings on 18th September 2019

Out of stock

SKU: 9780008280529S Categories: , ,

Description

A brand new history of the Dambusters raid from best-selling and critically acclaimed military historian, Max Hastings.

Operation Chastise, the destruction of the Mohne and Eder dams in north-west Germany by the RAF’s 617 Squadron on the night of 16/17 May 1943, was an epic that has passed into Britain’s national legend.

Max Hastings grew up embracing the story, the classic 1955 movie and the memory of Guy Gibson, the 24-year-old wing-commander who led the raid. In the 21st Century, however, he urges that we should see the dambusters in much more complex shades. The aircrew’s heroism was entirely real, as was the brilliance of Barnes Wallis, inventor of the ‘bouncing bombs’. But commanders who promised their young fliers that success could shorten the war fantasised as ruthlessly as they did about the entire bomber offensive. Some 1,400 civilians perished in the biblical floods that swept through the Mohne valley, more than half of them Russian and Polish women, slave labourers.

Hastings vividly describes the evolution of Wallis’ bomb, and of the squadron which broke the dams. But he also portrays in harrowing detail those swept away by the torrents. He argues that what modern Germans call the Mohnenkatastrophe imposed on the Nazi war machine temporary disruption, rather than a crippling blow. Ironically, Air Marshal Sir Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris gained much of the public credit, though he bitterly opposed Chastise as a distraction from his city-burning blitz. Harris also made perhaps the operation’s biggest mistake – failure to launch a conventional attack on the huge post-raid repair operation which could have transformed the impact of the dam breaches on Ruhr industry.

Here once again is a dramatic retake on familiar history by a master of the art. Hastings sets the Dams Raid in the big picture of the bomber offensive and of the Second World War, with moving portraits of the young airmen, so many of whom died; of Barnes Wallis; the monstrous Harris; the tragic Guy Gibson, together with superb narrative of the action of one of the most extraordinary episodes in British history.

Further Information

Format Hardback
Publisher Harper Collins Publishers
Published 05/09/2019
Shipping We aim to ensure the books in your order reach you in perfect condition. All our books are supplied wrapped in bubble-wrap and shipped in a book box.
Pre-Orders We aim to dispatch all pre-order titles on or around the date of publication. Sometimes, due to circumstances beyond our control, there might be a delay. Should this be the case, we will contact you to let you know.

If your order contains a combination of in stock and pre-order, not yet published titles, we will usually hold the order and dispatch when all titles are in stock. If you would like us to release parts of your order sooner, please contact us to arrange an additional postage and packaging payment.