Historical inaccuracies
The film is accurate historically with only a few minor exceptions, mostly derived from Paul Brickhill’s book, which itself was written when much detail about the raid was not yet in the public domain:
Barnes Wallis said that he never encountered any opposition from bureaucracy. In the film, when a reticent official asks what he can possibly say to the RAF to persuade them to lend a Vickers Wellington bomber for flight testing the bomb, Wallis suggests: “Well, if you told them that I designed it, do you think that might help?” Barnes Wallis was heavily involved with the design of the Wellington, as it used his geodesic construction method, but he was not the chief designer.
Instead of all of Gibson’s tour-expired crew at 106 Squadron volunteering to follow him to his new command, only his wireless operator, Hutchinson, went with him to 617 Squadron.
Crews for the operation were not all highly decorated and personally selected by Gibson; some crews were simply posted straight in.
Rather than the purpose as well as the method of the raid being Wallis’ sole idea, the dams had already been identified as an important target by the Air Ministry before the war.
Gibson did not devise the “spotlights altimeter” after visiting a theatre; it was suggested by Benjamin Lockspeiser of the Ministry of Aircraft Production after Gibson requested they solve the problem. It was a proven method used by RAF Coastal Command aircraft for some time.
The wooden “coat hanger” bomb sight intended to enable crews to release the weapon at the right distance from the target was not wholly successful; some crews used it, but others came up with their solutions, such as pieces of string in the bomb-aimer’s position and/or markings on the blister.
No bomber flew into a hillside near a target on the actual raid. This scene, which is not in the original version, was included in the copy released on the North American market (see above). (One bomber did crash near a target after being hit by the blast, and two or more may have crashed due to hitting power lines in the valleys.)
Some of the sequences showing the testing of Upkeep in the film are of Mosquito fighter-bombers dropping the naval version of the bouncing bomb, code-named “Highball”, intended to be used against ships. This version of the weapon was never used operationally.
At the time the film was made, certain aspects of Upkeep were still held classified, so the actual test footage was censored to hide any details of the test bombs, and the dummy bombs carried by the Lancasters were spherical rather than the true cylindrical shape.
So yeah let’s worry about the dog’s name.
