The Dambusters (C4) 'ANYONE see an airfield out there?," asked pilot Lucy of her crew as they prepared to land a wartime Lancaster bomber in darkness. There was further amusement in the cockpit as she put the aircraft down, as she didn't have any brakes.

If this had been for real, it would have been no laughing matter. Humour relieved the tension as eight newly-graduated RAF air crew began training for a recreation of one of the most famous air missions of the Second World War - the Dambusters raid to destroy German dams and cripple their arms manufacturing industry.

As the 60th anniversary approaches, this two-part documentary provides a comprehensive guide to the men and the mission. There is the testimony of the few remaining men alive who took part, along with archive film of the war in the air. The makers are taking the reconstruction sequences further than the current crop of TV history series that loves to recreate the past. Instead of men and women dressed up in uniforms in snapshots of the action, they've recruited an air crew of modern fliers to train and carry out the bombing just as it happened in 1943.

Lucy and her crew were inside a computer-controlled Lancaster simulator capable of replicating the landscape, weather, stars, moon and enemy gunfire that the real Dambusters had to overcome to deliver Barnes Wallis's bouncing bombs to the Germans.

While there was amusement at their initial failure to master flying the Lancaster and the art of navigation, the modern day crew recognised their wartime counterparts risked their lives in the service of their country. As an instructor put it after the initial tests: "Now's the time for the fun factor to go out of the window".

Showing what the pilots and crews had to do certainly brings home vividly their difficult task. The bomb needed to be dropped at a precise angle to destroy the dams, demanding unprecedented skill and heroism to launch it. And the British badly needed a triumph to convince the Americans and Russians that the war could be won.

The low level mission was one of the most technically difficult pieces of flying ever attempted, as the 21st century fliers discovered. Aircraft had to navigate their way for seven hours at night at an altitude of 100ft. It's no wonder that nearly half the men in 617 Squadron didn't make it back to England.

Today's "Play Station generation" pilots are more used to relying on computers than a human being. One of the original Dambusters pointed out it was a team effort in his day: "If you didn't work together and cooperate, you were dead ducks."

Clearly, the new Dambusters - a mix of fighter pilots and airborne electronics specialists - are going to have a hard time adjusting to putting their lives in the hands of the person sitting next to them in the aircraft. After the first 90-minute programme, they were nowhere near ready as several disastrous trips in the simulator demonstrated. They must have been longing for the skills of Dambuster pilot Les Knight. He, according to flight engineer Ray Grayston, "couldn't ride a bike, couldn't drive a car, but could fly the arse off a Lancaster".

Published: 08/04/2003