Bouncing-Bomb Man: The Science of Sir Barnes Wallis

by Iain Murray

Barnes Wallis’s work covers far more than just basketwork bombers and bouncing bombs. So how did his engineering genius take ideas from airships and push them forward to aircraft faster than Concorde? Barnes Wallis is best known as the’ boffin’ behind the famous bouncing bomb used by 617 Squadron to breach the Ruhr dams in 1943, but his work covers a far wider canvas. It ranges from airships, through novel aircraft structures and special weapons to long-range supersonic aircraft, and an extensive patent portfolio. This book describes the huge breadth of Wallis’s work. It shows why his genius brought totally new ideas into these fields, and reveals the science and engineering expertise that he deployed to make them work.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010