I watched the great war movie The Dambusters again this weekend as part of Channel 4’s 100 Greatest War Films Weekend and was a bit shocked to learn that they had named their dog Nigger and that it was the codeword to be used on the mission for a successful breach of the Moehne Dam after the dog.
Nigger, a black Labrador Retriever who gave his name as the codename for the Dam Busters mission in World War II. (He was given the name solely because he was black, but it is usually edited out of modern versions of the film about the mission.)
This text licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “List of historical dogs”.
Such were the innocent times of the 40s when heroic British pilots could name their pets with derogatory terms for other races.
Tags: movies, World War II
