# The Dam Busters (1954)

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dam-busters-1954/340677>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [January 19, 2006, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dam-busters-1954/340677 "2006-01-19T17:06:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![beergeek279](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7ea924/32.png) [@beergeek279](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beergeek279)\
**Post date:** [January 20, 2006, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dam-busters-1954/340677/21 "2006-01-20T16:02:15Z")

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Also, if you’ve seen _The Wall_, the black and white movie that he watches in the hotel is _The Dam Busters_, and mostly refers to the dog in the movie (which, as has been said, is the real-life name of the squadron’s dog and isn’t meant to be sensationalistic…which it ended up being because it overshadows the movie as a whole).

The discussion in the final episode of Series 1 of the British _Office_ about the spirit of the Dam Busters and the dog’s name is pretty amusing as well.

(I’ve not seen _the Dam Busters_, but it’s very high on my to-see list)

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**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\
**Post date:** [January 20, 2006, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dam-busters-1954/340677/22 "2006-01-20T16:11:26Z")

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> [@Johnny L.A.](#):
>
> **633 Squadron**.
> 
> IIRC the original bombs were barrel-shaped (note the ones in the film weren’t true spheres), but Wallis discovered they worked better if the wooden shells were removed just leaving a metal cylinder. Just going on memory though.

Sounds about right. I read a more detailed book on the raid (can’t remember who the author is) last year. I’ve also seen a very nice flying model Lanc complete with Upkeep gear including a rotating mechanism. The modeller used a football (an English one, that is) painted black as the bomb, though.

> [@Johnny L.A.](#):
>
> The black lab’s name was ‘N\_\_\_\_\_’. Sorry to be so circumspect, but I’ve disliked the word since I was nine years old and found out what it meant.

Well, but “Nigger” is what Gibson called his dog, and with no malice aforethought. The name was also, of course, adopted as code for “The Mohne Dam has been destroyed”. I think the word clung onto its innocence a little longer over here, mainly because we didn’t have several million freed slaves to assimilate into the population and the concomitant social problems. Times change, of course, and I’d no more use the word in casual conversation than I’d go through Mark Twain with a blue pencil.

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**Author:** ![Siege](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@Siege](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siege)\
**Post date:** [January 20, 2006, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-dam-busters-1954/340677/23 "2006-01-20T22:50:30Z")

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Thanks, all of you. I did get it from the first hint, and I can certainly understand why it’d be dubbed in the American version. I’d agree that Englishmen and Americans certainly used to have different responses to the word, and the racial situations in the two countries have been very different.

I think I’ll have to check this movie out.

CJ

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