'The Dambusters - A Reassessment' by television historian and broadcaster James Holland

James Holland, author of 'Dams Raid', delivered his talk entitled 'The Dams Raid - A Reassessment', at an event to commemorate the anniversary of the Dambusters Raid in 2013. Organised by the Barnes Wallis Memorial Trust, the event took place at the Howden School of Technology in East Yorkshire. The event also included talks from Squadron Leader George 'Johnny' Johnson, one of the three remaining survivors of the 617 Squadron Dambusters Raid, and Mary Stopes-Roe, the daughter of Barnes Wallis who invented the famous bouncing bomb used in the raid. Through Trust member Professor Richard Morris, the University of Huddersfield's Arms and Armour Research Group were kindly invited to film the event.

[marknelson]

His book on the subject is outstanding.

[Alan]

this guy is brilliant!! His Battle of Britain lecture is one of the best!! wish all my history teachers had been this interesting and enthusiastic.

[chrisst]

I watched James Holland's Race To Smash The Dams programme last night and it's the best programme on the subject. He's a very good speaker. I wonder if he'd do something on R. V. Jones.

[Kabul]

James Holland does some good documentary work!

Jman

[christophercoverdale]

Well done James, really enjoyed your presentation on the Dambusters

[richardvandervord]

Fascinating detail, engaging and thought-provoking delivery

[theotherside]

I read years ago the more contemporary books such as enemy coast ahead about this and its amazing how much new information can be found about this. The negative reviews of the raid seem to be by people who don't actually have a sufficient level of knowledge but are willing to repeat cheap shots to be clever.

[colinrunciman]

Abboluty, brilliant, your completely correct.

[christianleconte]

Two important points seem to be left out from all podcasts and books or articles and which appear in the book :
" The Dambusters"

1 As a last ditch effort seeing all the high command was refusing to go along the inventor, through a high placed friend, managed to get the plan directly to Winston Churchill who approved it after asking only one question.
How many planes would be involved?

2 the second planes bomb which flew over the dam took out the 2 german firing positions when it exploded.
Both of these were much more detailed in the book which said that the inventor who was totally devastated by the death of almost half of the aviators .

[jimthorne]

I think, following the description of the way in which it was decided to embark upon the dams raid, there's a field of study out there to look at the way WW2 was managed in the combatant countries. We have a certain amount of information for Germany, Russia, and Japan, but for the UK it's often quite obscure, and the roles played by Churchill and the War Office seem to be relatively obscure.
I would say that in a war many mistakes are made by the leaders of the combatant countries, even to the point that wars are 'won' by the country that makes the smallest number of mistakes. Some were killed off, e.g. his desire to invade the Balkans, others, e.g. Norway or the invasion of Italy, were rather more questionable. There are also serious questions about the air war, and the way that Harris was able to run very much his own private war carpet bombing German cities, when there is a case that this was ineffective and a waste of resources.

[kamran]

When I saw the title of this talk I thought it would be some kind of terrible Social Justice angle, pointing out all the "racism", "sexism" and "white supremacy" going on. Thank God I was wrong.. ;-)

[dennismason]

Isn't Harris the monster who prescribed the Dresden Massacre?

[RobHoard]

This guy has no idea how close he was t speaking German. We just barely won that one. Without the US. You would not have prevailed.