Operación Castigo

In mid-March 1943 and with great secrecy, Squad X was formed, whose mission was to break the Ruhr dams to flood farmland and paralyze industry in that very important German valley. While the heroism of the aircrew was totally authentic, as was the brilliance of some protagonists of the mission such as Barnes Wallis -the inventor of the Upkeep bomb-, it is also true that the commanders who promised their young airmen that success could shorten the war they wildly fantasized. Hastings vividly describes the entire operation, from a purely military perspective to the devastating material and human losses: some 1,400 civilians were killed in the floods that swept through the Möhne Valley, more than half of them French prisoners or Russian and Polish forced laborers.