The Dam Busters

The Dam Busters recounts the development of a weapon meant to cripple Germany's industrial heartland during the Second World War. An engineer, Barnes Wallis, works out that destroying the dams of the Ruhr valley would cut power to the factories sustaining the German war effort. The problem is that conventional bombs cannot breach such massive masonry, so he designs a cylindrical device that can be dropped at a precise height and speed to skip across the water and sink against the dam wall before detonating. After his early trials fail, he wins backing from senior Royal Air Force commanders, and a new squadron is assembled under Wing Commander Guy Gibson to train for the raid and carry it out.

Michael Anderson directed the film, which was the first of the features listed in his career and came before Around the World in 80 Days and 1984. R.C. Sherriff wrote the screenplay, and the cast includes Richard Todd as Gibson and Michael Redgrave as Wallis, with Ursula Jeans, Basil Sydney, Patrick Barr and Ernest Clark among the credited performers.

Released in May 1955, the film runs 124 minutes and was produced in the United Kingdom by Associated British Picture Corporation. It holds an IMDb rating of 7.4 from around 12,000 votes and a TMDB rating of 6.9 from a much smaller number of votes. A critics' rating of 8.2 from 11 reviews places it somewhat above the audience scores.