Operation Chastise, the Dambusters Raid, hardly needs an introduction to anyone remotely interested in military aviation history. In this 80th anniversary year, there are several new books about the raid. This slim new volume from Guideline explores different aspects of the operation, its build-up, and aftermath in a general and abbreviated manner.

Author Des Brennan will be familiar to modeling magazine readers, and he approaches the subject with a number of short chapters outlining topics including:

• The development of the Lancaster
• Short biography of Barnes Wallis, developer of the ‘bouncing bomb’
• Bomber Command and Arthur Harris
• Preparations for the Raid
• The aftermath
• And others.

It’s an interesting, if short read. Brennan does a good job distilling the essentials into a cogent narrative.

The text is accompanied by 8 pages of color profiles of not only Dams Raid aircraft, but other 617 Squadron Lancasters during and after the war. There are also some 150 photos, mostly black and white of course. The quality of these is very mixed, with some obviously low-resolution digital files that are blown up far too much and are heavily pixilated in consequence. This is the biggest failing of this book.

A book of this nature cannot be anything but a taster and there are many far more comprehensive books about The Raid out there, but this is a competent introduction to the subject. Available in print and digitally, my thanks go to Guideline Publications for the review sample.