On Wednesday, March 6, 2024, Ted Barris brings a talk/presentation based on his bestselling book Dam Busters: Canadian Airmen and the Secret Raid against Nazi Germany to Royal United Services Institute of Vancouver Island.

It was a night that changed the Second World War. The secret air raid against the hydroelectric dams of Germany’s Ruhr River took years to plan, involved an untried bomb, and included the best aircrewmen RAF Bomber Command could muster – many of them Canadian. The attack marked the first time the Allies tactically took the war inside Nazi Germany.

On May 16, 1943, 133 airmen took off in 19 Lancaster bombers on a night sortie, code-named Operation Chastise. Hand-picked and specially trained, the Lancaster crews flew at treetop level to the industrial heartland of the Third Reich and their targets – the Ruhr River dams – whose massive water reservoirs powered Nazi Germany’s military industrial complex.

Every one of the 133 airmen on the raid understood the odds of survival were low. Of the 19 bombers outbound, eight did not return. Operation Chastise cost the lives of 53 airmen, including 14 Canadians. Of the 16 RCAF men who survived, seven received military decorations. Dam Busters recounts the dramatic story of these Commonwealth bomber crews tasked with a high-risk mission against an enemy prepared to defend the Fatherland to the death.

Ted Barris has published 20 non-fiction books, half of them wartime histories. His book, The Great Escape: A Canadian Story, won the 2014 Libris Award as Best Non-Fiction Book in Canada. His book, Dam Busters: Canadian Airmen and the Secret Raid Against Nazi Germany, received the 2018 NORAD Trophy from the RCAF Association. And his book, Rush to Danger: Medics in the Line of Fire, was long-listed for the 2020 Charles Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction in Canada. In December 2022, Ted Barris was appointed Member of the Order of Canada.