The dambusters’ story has spawned such a flood of books, it’s a wonder there is anything new to say. But Max Hasting’s Chastise is a virtuoso performance from a veteran military historian. It is a white-knuckle narrative that brings clarity and insight to a much-loved tale, as well as offering a vital corrective to the drum-thumping conclusions of earlier books.

With Chastise— which was also the slightly prissy codename for the operation — Hastings wishes to give a full and rounded reckoning. Despite its occasional purple flourishes (and, again, who could resist?), the story he tells is a remarkably unsentimental and often technical one.

...the tale told by Max Hastings, a renowned military historian and journalist, is more complex and less celebratory than the book’s cover implies. His account of the events of May 16-17, 1943, will keep you on the edge of your seat, but his analysis of their causes and consequences is equally deserving of attention.

Military history is populated with too many narrow minds, writers who know everything about weapons, but understand little about war’s tragic consequences. Max Hastings, in contrast, can recite the military minutiae, but is also motivated to ask difficult questions about the victims of slaughter — those shot, blown apart, or in this case swept away by a wall of water.

Hastings goes beyond a traditional unit history to not only tell the tale of the British engineers and aircrews, but the German civilians living below the dam and their tales of survival during the attack. His sympathetic weaving of all these individual experiences show the wide range of effects this battle had on the survivors from both sides.

... fascinating and immensely readable.

Hastings examines the intersection between the legend of what is known as the Dambusters Raid and the somber historical realities that underpin it...To be sure, Hastings does justice to both. His account of the development of Upkeep, the cylindrical depth charge conceived to destroy targets such as heavily defended battleships and dams that no existing weapons could successfully engage, is a fascinating study in technological ingenuity and improvisation. Similarly, Hastings’s description of the terrifying realities of war in the skies over Nazi-occupied Europe stands as a testament to the quiet heroism and remarkable airmanship of ordinary RAF bomber crews.

Following a superb rendering of the attack, Hastings addresses two uncomfortable consequences: many civilians and, ironically, enslaved laborers were killed, and the operation failed its strategic ambition since the destroyed dams were quickly rebuilt. Hastings has composed a fitting memorial to Operation Chastise’s participants..

Hastings...recounts the May 1943 British bombing raid that breached the Möhne and Eder dams in Germany’s Rühr Valley, knocking out power stations and unleashing deadly floods, in this thorough, character-driven history.

The master of military history takes on Britain’s celebrated May 1943 Dam Buster air attack.