THIS week, I watched a great programme on the amazing bravery displayed by the young men in the RAF’s wartime bomber command.

I was transported back 70 years to the early days of the Second World War with a film about the dangerous dambusters raid using the famous bouncing bomb, which, though it helped turn the tide of war against the Germans, wouldn’t be allowed nowadays as it would be completely illegal.

Martin Shaw fronted the programme which used the somewhat flimsy premise of comparing the old film, The Dambusters, with how it would be done today using information that wasn’t available to the filmmakers because it was still classified when it was made.

This worked on two fronts as the actor is also a pilot, so he recreated the flight to the German Ruhr Valley in a modern plane, acting as navigator to an experienced RAF chappie.

The modern programme was interspersed with clips of the film, old wartime footage, stills of the young gung-ho RAF pilots and memories of the few survivors from that long lost age.

What it brought home to me was that in those days, Britain was a completely different buttoned-up country then compared to our modern ‘liberal’ state of today.

This was an age where men and women were expected to do their duty for their country (and did so without complaint) and where authority was never questioned.

These were the Biggles days when ‘dashing’ aircrew, barely into their twenties, became men overnight as they went out on night bombing raids knowing that there was a high chance of them not returning. Yet they queued up to do it.

These young men (middle and upper middle class to a man) were given nicknames like Binky or Johnny and, bizarrely, seemed to like smoking pipes — probably for the added gravitas it gave them.

The Dambusters film, it turns out, was factually wrong, as information, especially about the revolutionary bouncing bomb, was not available because the Government didn’t release details of the device until many years later.

The 617 squadron formed to deliver the bomb paid a heavy price to deliver it to its target, but they did succeed and it apparently caused the German war effort severe problems.

Shaw got special permission to fly over land in Britain and over the channel at about 100ft in the daytime and then flew low over the dam, just as the men flying the Lancaster bombers did in 1943.

Except that they did all that at night with rudimentary instruments and with the final miles under heavy bombardment from German defence forces. Brave men indeed.

Two dams burst and, when the main target was breached, it sent a huge tsunami roaring down the valley, destroying homes and entire villages, sweeping 1,600 people to their deaths. What I didn’t know is that the Germans get hold of a bouncing bomb from a crashed Lancaster bomber.

With typical Teutonic efficiency they soon had the bomb stripped down and rare film showed the German version was a rocket powered bouncing bomb which they planned to use on British dams. Thankfully, they never did.