A team of engineers has managed to recreate one of the greatest wartime raids in history – with a little help from a cricket bowling machine. The bouncing bomb developed by scientist Barnes Wallis was used to breach key German dams in 1943, cutting off hydro-electric power and wrecking factories. The raid was the subject of Paul Brickhill’s 1951 book The Dambusters and the 1954 movie of the same name. But the science behind the successful operation, including the original calculations and designs, was lost in a flood in the 1960s.