The Dam Busters, The (1955)
British flyers try to cripple the Nazis by taking out their dams.
Dir: Michael Anderson. Cast: Michael Redgrave, Ursula Jeans, Charles Carson. TV-PG. 10:45 PST. TCM.
Watch the RAF use the Force use precision flying as they shoot two torpedoes at the Death Star’s exhaust port bounce bombs at Germany’s dams in the Ruhr Valley during WW2. This is a very good to great movie and inspiration for some of Star Wars’ climactic scenes. Also on tomorrow (all times Pacific) are prior CPODs The Bitter Tea of General Yen (5:15 AM), Baby Face (6:45 AM), Meet John Doe (10:00 AM), Casablanca (5:00 PM) and The Third Man (7:00 PM).
Interesting,there was a TV show on recently(“Nova”,I think)where there were some people in Canada recreating how this dam busting was done.Wasn’t easy.
I’ve seen a WWII documentary on this, and some of the methods they tried were seemingly almost out of the dark ages.
The planes flew in very low,and the ordnance sort of skipped across the surface of the water…really fascinating.
Hey, http://www.threedonia.com/archives/56733 Dam it.
Only TCM will ever show this movie, other folks don’t want the attention of the special interest groups. The commander’s black dog (zeppelin connection?) is not thoughtfully named for modern sensibilities, shall we say.
And skip bombing was used, as well, by the USAAF medium bombers in the pacific against Japanese maritime shipping to great effect. Perhaps even more challanging in that it was done on the ocean against (slowly) moving targets with regular everyday bombs not the designed to skip round bombs of the RAF.
Hey, there’s a lot of fire coming from the right side of that flak tower!
I never saw that comment… I was in the Bahamas you know.
THis was my original source:
Everything is a Remix Part 2 from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.
Vacation excused! The poor dog well never get remixed, I don’t think even Blackie would fly now days.
I’m assuming at some point in the movie, they attempt to hit the dam and miss. After this happens, the commander looks around and says, “DAMN!” followed by an awkward silence?
And “Left-tenant” Reginald Porkins buys the farm