The efficacy of the Dambusters Raid of 16-17 May 1943 remains disputed by historians, with the trend amongst recent authors and documentary-makers to argue that its success lay primarily in propaganda terms (although the importance of propaganda in wartime should not be underestimated). What is beyond doubt is the skill and courage displayed by all those who took part, notably the commander of 617 Squadron, Guy Gibson, who was awarded a V.C. for flying alongside other attacking aircraft to draw anti-aircraft fire, after dropping his own ‘bouncing bomb’.

In 1994 two biographies of Gibson appeared: Richard Morris’s ‘Guy Gibson’ and Susan Ottaway’s ‘Dambuster. The Life of Guy Gibson VC’. The latter has now been reprinted in a new updated and revised edition, with a new Introduction. Amongst other things, using her contacts with the Gibson family, Ottaway seeks to set the record straight regarding what Morris wrote about the nature of the young Gibson’s dysfunctional family.

Ottaway’s book is a labour of love, arising out of her childhood reading of Gibson’s ‘Enemy Coast Ahead’ but her Bibliography suggests some surprising omissions in those labours (unless the books have been consulted but not recorded) as there’s no reference to Max Arthur’s ‘Dambusters’, Helmuth Euler’s ‘The Dambuster Raid’ or ‘Guy Gibson’ by Geoff Simpson, let alone to the more general works on the strategic bombing offensive by Noble Frankland, Sir Charles Webster and R. J. Overy.

Ottaway’s book, although thoughtful and making particularly good use of Evelyn Gibson’s unpublished manuscript about her husband, is simply not an academic book, as it lacks the scholarly apparatus of footnotes. This undoubtedly helps to make it a more readable study of Gibson’s character but severely constrains its value as an historical work.