12 April 2007

Local Dambusters expert helps with TV show

This story relates to "Casualties of War", an episode of the TV drama "Foyle's War" to be shown on ITV1 on Sunday 18th April 2007 at 9.00pm.

In making Sunday night's episode of "Foyle's War" (ITV1, 9.00pm.), the show's producers called on the expertise of a local expert on the "Dambusters". Sunday's episode of the drama, which features actor Michael Kitchen, is entitled "Casualties of War" and is set around a fictitious research group working on the famous "bouncing bombs" which were used to breach two German dams in May 1943.

To decorate the set as realistically as possible, researchers from the show contacted the Brooklands Museum at Weybridge, where bouncing bomb inventor Barnes Wallis worked. The museum forwarded the enquiry to Dr. Iain Murray, a lecturer in the School of Computing at the University of Dundee, who also has a research interest in Barnes Wallis.

Dr. Murray says, "The TV researchers were looking for authentic calculations and graphs to put onto blackboards. Fortunately, I had recently been researching this aspect of Wallis' work in the archives, so I was able to point them towards exactly the documents that they were looking for. So the formulae that can be seen on the blackboards which appear behind the actors in the show are the real thing. It was an unusual request, but I was impressed that they took the trouble to be as accurate as possible."

The episode also recreates a machine used to test the "bouncing bomb" and features shots of the bombs being tested, some of real test drops and others created for the show using computer graphic techniques.

Dr. Murray says, "I’ve been interested in Barnes Wallis for ten years and seriously researching him for three years, in my spare time. I’m interested in him as an engineer - everybody knows about the bouncing bomb, but he was also a leading airship designer, designed the first supersonic aircraft which flew without a pilot and designed swing wing airplanes."

"Foyle's War" is produced by Greenlit Rights Limited: http://www.greenlit.co.uk/
More information on the show is available at: http://www.foyleswar.com/

For further information, please contact:
Iain Murray, School of Computing, University of Dundee,
Dundee DD1 4HN.
(01382) 384155 Fax: (01382) 385509
e-mail: irmurray@computing.dundee.ac.uk

For media enquiries contact:

Anna Day
Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384768
E-MAIL: a.c.day@dundee.ac.uk