The Lancaster was the frontline heavy bomber of the RAF during World War Two, and dropped, in total, more tons of bombs than the American B-17.
“Icons of Aviation History” is a diary series that explores significant and historic aircraft.
By the late 1930s, England knew that a war with Hitler’s Germany was looming. She also knew that the Royal Air Force was not prepared for it: the new and more modern Nazi bombers and fighters outclassed everything the British could put up against them. And so the RAF made desperate attempts to catch up.
In 1936, the UK requested proposals for a new two-engined medium bomber that could deliver 4 tons of bombs to a radius of 1,000 miles. At the Avro company, designer Roy Chadwick took up the challenge, and within a few months had drawn up plans for the Manchester. By mid-1937, the British Air Ministry ordered 200 of the bombers, to be fitted with the still-in-development Rolls-Royce Vulture engines, before a prototype had even been built.
But when the Manchester began entering service in November 1940, it proved to be a disappointment. The Vulture engine was simply not powerful enough, and the Manchester struggled to keep up speed or to gain altitude. The engine was also mechanically unreliable. Once the initial order of 200 had been delivered, the RAF stopped procuring the planes. Other two-engined bombers were rushed into production—the Whitley, the Wellington, the Blenheim—but they were also inadequate. What was needed was a heavy four-engine bomber that could take the fight into Germany.
At Avro, Chadwick recognized that the Manchester’s problems came not from his airframe, but from the inadequate Vulture engines. So he redesigned the aircraft, turning it into a heavy bomber with four less-powerful but more reliable Rolls-Royce Merlin engines, mounted onto bigger wings. The Merlin had already been put into service with the Hurricane and Spitfire fighters, had been proven to be dependable, and was already being produced in large numbers. Many would dub it the best aircraft engine of the war.
And so, with more fuel tanks added to increase the range, the Manchester airframe became transformed into the Lancaster heavy bomber. The first prototype flew in January 1941, and a second test model appeared in May, using the most powerful Merlin XX engine available. The second prototype also altered the original triple-tailfin design to a twin tailfin, to allow for a better field of fire for the turret guns. The Air Ministry immediately began placing orders—1,000 planes in October, and more to follow. Avro couldn’t keep up, and licensed Lancaster Model B Is were soon being produced by other British companies. At one point there was a shortage of Merlin engines: to keep up continuous production of both fighters and bombers, a new Lancaster B II model was introduced as a stopgap, using the Bristol Hercules engine instead. Only 300 of these were made. Another version was produced by the Victory Aircraft Company in Canada, using American-built Merlin engines from the Packard automobile manufacturer, and the British began producing Model B III “Lancs” which also used American-built Merlin engines.
The Lanc had a crew of seven. The pilot flew the plane, and the flight engineer sitting next to him monitored the mechanical systems and controlled the fuel tanks (he was not a co-pilot—he had no flight controls). Behind them, the navigator kept the plane on course, and further back was the wireless radio operator who maintained communications. In the nose, the bomb-aimer took control of the aircraft once over the target and dropped the bombs; he also manned the forward-facing machine guns. And there were two additional gunners, one in the upper turret and one in the tail turret (with four guns), to defend against enemy fighters. In all, the Lancaster had 8 .303-caliber machine guns. Early designs had a gun turret in the belly, but this was later removed.
Air Marshall Sir Arthur Harris, who had been appointed in early 1942 to head the RAF’s Bomber Command, immediately recognized the potential of the big bomber. The Lancaster could deliver a huge bomb load, and it could do it over long distances. After the Battle of Britain and the Blitz, it would become the weapon that England would use to carry the war into Germany’s heartland. “Bomber” Harris began to plan a relentless air campaign that would, he hoped, bring the Nazis to their knees.
A controversy quickly broke out with the Americans, however, on the best tactics to use. The Americans wanted to wage a bombing campaign that would specifically target key areas of German industry and hit them with “precision strikes”. That would require bombing from relatively low altitudes during day, since even the best bombsights of the time were barely able to give any accuracy. The RAF, however, had already tried precision daylight raids early in the war, and had suffered heavy losses from Luftwaffe fighters. So Harris argued that the Allies should launch “area strikes” that would saturate entire German cities with bombs, which would fly at night and at high altitude to escape the Nazi defenses. In the end, there was no agreement, and each side began to plan and carry out the type of raids that it wanted to do. The B-17s and B-24s went in during the day, and the Lancasters and Halifaxes went in at night. Germany would be bombed round the clock.
Although it had over 50,000 separate parts, the Lancaster had been designed to be constructed in five sections which could then be fitted together, making it easier to mass-produce. British factories were soon churning them out at the rate of five a day. But losses were heavy too: by the end of the war, over half of the 7,377 Lancasters that had been built were lost to enemy fire or to accidents. The average lifetime of a bomber crew was seven and a half missions.
Bomber Harris’s night-bombing campaign went into action in 1943. A series of electronic navigation systems were introduced and continuously improved to help the bombers reach their targets. Particular airplanes were fitted with radar sets and radio direction finders and their crews trained as “Pathfinders”. Their job was to go in first and drop their bombs as accurately as they could: the rest of the bombers behind them would then drop their own loads onto that marked aiming point. One by one, German industrial cities were targeted and destroyed.
Other crews were trained for their own special missions. The Lancaster could carry the biggest payload of any Allied bomber, an advantage that was often useful. The 11-ton “Grand Slam” bomb was designed to take out hardened targets like submarine pens, while specially-built “skip bombs” were used to destroy the hydroelectric dams in the Ruhr Valley. In all, Lancasters flew 156,000 wartime sorties and delivered 608,000 tons of high-explosive bombs and 51 million incendiary bomblets.
After the war ended, the Lanc continued as a long-range anti-submarine patrol and as a photo reconnaissance platform. The airframe was also modified into the Lancastrian, a civilian trans-Atlantic passenger plane. In March 1946, a Lancastrian became the first aircraft to fly out of London’s new Heathrow Airport.
Today, there are about 17 surviving Lancaster bombers. Most are on display in the UK, with several in Canada, including “Bazalgette” at the Bomber Command Museum of Canada in Nanton, Alberta, and a post-war version on exhibit at the National Air Force Museum of Canada in Trenton, Ontario.
NOTE: As some of you already know, all of my diaries here are draft chapters for a number of books I am working on. So I welcome any corrections you may have, whether it's typos or places that are unclear or factual errors. I think of y'all as my pre-publication editors and proofreaders. ;)