Anderson made the choice to shoot the film in black and white to allow the integration of original footage of the bomb trials, to boast a "gritty" documentary-style reality. The flight sequences of the film were shot using real
Avro Lancaster bombers supplied by the RAF. The aircraft, four of the final production B.VIIs, had to be taken out of storage and specially modified by removing the mid-upper
gun turrets to mimic 617 Squadron's special aircraft, and cost £130 per hour to run, which amounted to a tenth of the film's costs. A number of
Avro Lincoln bombers were also used as "set dressing". (An American cut was made more dramatic by depicting an aircraft flying into a hill and exploding. This version used
stock footage from
Warner Bros. Pictures of a
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, not a Lancaster.) The German anti-aircraft personnel were played by the 247 (Ulster) LAA Regiment, part of the
3rd (Ulster) Searchlight Regiment, Royal Artillery, and was filmed at
Stiffkey in north Norfolk.
Weybridge railway station was filmed for scenes, as Wallis had lived nearby. Filming began at Scampton on Tuesday 27 April 1954 for ten days. The
Upper Derwent Valley in
Derbyshire (the test area for the real raids) doubled as the
Ruhr valley for the film. The scene where the
Dutch coast is crossed was filmed between
Boston, Lincolnshire, and
King's Lynn,
Norfolk, and other coastal scenes near
Skegness. Filming at
Gibraltar Point began on Wednesday 21 April 1954, for four days. Appearing as an extra, on the beach, as an Air Commodore was Mr E Taylor, a teacher from
Skegness Grammar School. Mr Taylor had been an intelligence officer at
RAF Woodhall Spa. Other extras came from the Skegness Players. The scene where they fly along a canal was filmed on the Dutch river (local nickname for the canal) on the way to Goole which is on the M62 to Hull. As the planes turn across country you can see Goole fully as they turn. This was used as the area around Goole is perfectly flat. Additional aerial footage was shot above
Windermere, in the
Lake District. in 1954 While
RAF Scampton, where the real raid launched, was used for some scenes, the principal airfield used for ground location shooting was
RAF Hemswell, a few miles north and still an operational RAF station at the time of filming. Guy Gibson had been based at Hemswell in his final posting and the airfield had been an operational Avro Lancaster base during the war. At the time filming took place it was then home to
No. 109 Squadron and
No. 139 Squadron RAF, which were both operating
English Electric Canberras on electronic countermeasures and nuclear air sampling missions over hydrogen bomb test sites in the Pacific and Australia. However, part of the RAF's fleet of ageing Avro Lincolns had been mothballed at Hemswell prior to being broken up and several of these static aircraft appeared in background shots during filming, doubling for additional No 617 Squadron Lancasters. The station headquarters building still stands on what is now an industrial estate and is named Gibson House. The four wartime hangars also still stand, little changed in external appearance since the war. The former operations briefing room at Scampton, where scenes were filmed, was now the NCO mess. On the set, a survivor of the raid, David Shannon, said 'I think altogether, too much has been made of this raid. To us, it was just another operation' Serving RAF pilots from both squadrons based at Hemswell took turns flying the Lancasters during filming and found the close formation and low level flying around
Derwentwater and Windermere exhilarating and a welcome change from their normal high level solo Canberra sorties. While filming on one of the first days with the Lancasters, a Lancaster's tail wheel caught the roof of a nearby hanger, to the chagrin of a control tower officer. The Mosquito in the film was flown by Flying Officer Leslie Brown of Verena Terrace in Perth; he had been at Dunkirk with the
51st (Highland) Division, then joined the RAF and was shot down in north Africa, being an Italian prisoner of war for three years. Two of the Lancaster pilots were Fl Lt KP Souter and Flt Lt WD Caldwell. Three of the four Lancaster bombers used in the film had also appeared in the
Dirk Bogarde film
Appointment in London two years earlier. The theatre scene showing the spotlights was filmed at the
Lyric Theatre Hammersmith. The dance troupe was
The Television Toppers, on loan for one day filming, under contract from the BBC. The singer was June Powell, she sings the 1942 song "Sing Everybody Sing" by John P Long. Scenes were filmed at the Chelsea Palace on
Sydney Street. Richard Todd described filming the final scene with Michael Redgrave, where Gibson says he has to write letters, saying that as he walked away from the camera he was quietly weeping. He had his own experience of letter writing. He also said that the dog, also named Nigger, refused to go near the spot where the real Nigger was buried. Five photographs of Labrador dogs from a
site at
Melton Mowbray were sent to the film studios, and a mine-tracking dog was chosen, looked after by handler Lance Corporal Peter Reid of Ainslie Gardens in Perth, Scotland. The black Labrador had never lived in a house before, and Todd took the dog back to the White Hart Hotel in Lincoln, where the dog slept in the bathroom. Todd wanted to keep the dog, but the RAF would not let him.
Soundtrack The Dam Busters March, by
Eric Coates, is for many synonymous with the film, as well as with the exploit itself, and remains a favourite
military band item at
flypasts and in the concert hall. Other than the introduction and trio section theme, the majority of the march as performed is not featured in the film soundtrack. Coates himself avoided writing music for the cinema, remembering the experiences of his fellow composer
Arthur Bliss. Coates only agreed to provide an overture for the film after he was persuaded by the film's producers it was of "national importance" and pressure was put on him via his publisher,
Chappell. A march he had recently completed was found to fit well with the heroic subject and was thus submitted. The majority of the soundtrack in the film, including the theme played during the raid sequence, was composed by
Leighton Lucas.
Philip Lane, who reconstructed parts of Leighton Lucas's orchestral score (which had been lost) notes that Lucas created his own main theme "which seems to play hide and seek with Coates's throughout the film, both vying for supremacy." ==Historical accuracy==