The Dam Busters Quotes

“So even if you got it loaded it could not be anything more than a study in still-life until you took the jacks away, and then the scrap metal wouldn't be funny.”
― Paul Brickhill, The Dam Busters

“Perhaps the least affected was the wiry and rambunctious Martin. Aged twenty-four, he had already decided that he was going to die, if not on this raid then on some other. Before the war was over anyway. During his first few ‘ops’ he had often had sleepless nights or dreamed of burning aircraft. He saw all his friends on his squadron get ‘the chop’ one after the other till they were all gone and knew it would only be a question of time before he would probably join them. So finally he had accepted the fact that in a fairly short time, barring miracles, he was going to die, not pleasantly. That was his strength and largely why he was so boisterous. Having accepted that, the next step was automatic: to fill every day with as many of the fruits of life as possible. He did so with vigour. It was a corollary, more than a paradox, that he was not suicidal in the air but audacious in a calculating way, measuring every risk and if it were worth while, taking it, spinning it out as long as he could, but making every bomb tell. He did not believe in miracles”
― Paul Brickhill, The Dam Busters