Dambusters on AllMovie

The year is 1943, and as the Nazi war machine rises to the absolute height of its aggression, a hand-picked squadron of Royal Air Force pilots is selected to take part in one of the most daring, highly classified, and potentially deadly assignments in wartime history. As the training for "Operation Chastise" gets underway, a highly skilled collection of Allied aviators from Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States known as the 617 Squadron are trained for a top secret mission by Wing Commander Guy Gibson. With only seven weeks to prepare to execute a mission, the details of which were never fully revealed to the pilots, the race gets underway to strike a crippling blow against the Nazi steel industry. The mission won't be an easy one, though, because in order to accomplish their goal, the pilots will have to skim the tree tops in specially modified Lancaster aircraft as they fly deep into the heart of heavily fortified Germany in order to drop a revolutionary "bouncing" bomb designed to skim across the surface of the water and topple the dam with astonishing force. Developed by visionary scientist Barnes Wallis, these powerful new bombs must be dropped from a frighteningly low altitude and at a potentially deadly close range. Inspired by actual events and based on author Paul Brickhill's popular book The Dam Busters, Dambusters marks the directorial debut of longtime Peter Jackson collaborator Christian Rivers, and features special-effects work by Weta Digital, Ltd. and Weta Workshop, Ltd.